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THE NEW LIGHT ON 
THE OLD TRUTH 



THE NEW LIGHT ON 
THE OLD TKUTH 



BY 



CHARLES ALLEN DINSMORE 




BOSTON" AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 



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COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY CHARLES A. DINSMORE 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published October IQI2 



of C^%urr4»6 under Sp<f. 
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By Transfer 

D. C Public Library 

DEC 2 2 1938 






197615 



TO 
FREDERICK STARKWEATHER CHASE 

WHO 

MAINTAINING AMID HEAVY RESPONSIBILITIES 

HIS INTEREST IN THINGS SPIRITUAL 

OPENED HIS LIBRARY FOR THESE TALKS 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 



PREFACE 

A company of thirty men met recently in 
the library of one of their number on six con- 
secutive Monday evenings and invited me to 
address them on the modifications of religious 
faith resulting from the investigations of sci- 
entists and the researches of critics. They were 
men of affairs, most of them manufacturers, 
all of them prominent in business or profes- 
sional life. For an hour I talked on the great 
themes of the spirit; then for an hour, often 
for an hour and a half, there were questions 
and discussion. 

The city in which these discourses were given 
is one of the busiest and most prosperous in 
New England. That men of large responsibili- 
ties volunteered to give an evening a week to 
consider religious topics is an indication of a 
deeper note in our American life. 

The addresses were delivered extemporane- 
ously and have been written out from memory, 
with only slight modifications and additions. 



viii PREFACE 

The address on the Bible was somewhat longer 
than the others, and, being written out more 
fully, has been divided into two chapters. 
The specialist will find nothing new in these 
pages. I cannot boast that any original light 
has shone upon the old truths through me. 
The words are the utterance of a preacher who 
hopes that within the range of his vision he 
has seen clearly. 

I wish to acknowledge indebtedness to Pro- 
fessor Douglas C. Macintosh and Rev. Wilbert 
L. Anderson, D.D., for helpful suggestions. 
Charles Allen Dinsmore. 



CONTENTS 
I 

THE MODERN WORLD AND THE MODERN MAN 

Introduction. — The changed world. — The modern 
man ; new bases of thought ; larger freedom ; scientific 
spirit; changed motives. — The two schools of the new 
theology. — The seat of authority in religion .... 1 

II 

THE BIBLE 

The record of an inspired race. — Method of the 
writers. — Priest and prophet. — The higher criticism. — 
Early religious life of Israel. — The work of Moses. — 
The critical period. — The services of David and Solo- 
mon. — The first continuous narrative. — The second 
narrative 29 

III 

THE BIBLE (continued) 

The prophets. — Deuteronomy. — History reedited. 
— The Captivity. — Its literary activity. — Jerusalem 
rebuilded. — The priestly account of Israel's early his- 
tory. — Night of legalism. — Broad sympathies shown 
in Ruth and Jonah. — Contest with Hellenism. — Christ, 
both priest and prophet. — The reconstruction of the 
New Testament 57 



x CONTENTS 

IV 

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 

His place in the evolution of humanity. — God's pro- 
gressive revelation of himself. — Incarnation in an indi- 
vidual in the interests of the race. — Redemption by 
conformity to type. — In what sense was he perfect. — 
Our highest symbol of the Eternal. — The line between 
the divine and human. — The mood of to-day regarding 
miracles. — Christ's consciousness of God. — His realiza- 
tion of the Father. — His ethical sonship. — Difficulty of 
proving his sinlessness. — Unsurpassed in the sphere of 
religion. — His conception of his mission. — His ability 
to satisfy our spiritual needs. — Christianity does all 
that a religion can be required to do 93 



GOD AND SALVATION 

New symbols of the divine majesty. — New concep- 
tions of God. — The perfect vs. the militant God. — 
Materialism a waning philosophy. — John Fiske's strong 
argument for the existence of God. — God known in 
experience. — Contrast between Huxley and Phillips 
Brooks. — Differences between good men are differences 
of language rather than of experience. — New view of 
the nature of sin. — Its source in animality, ignorance, 
and perversity. — Its unnaturalness. — The waning con- 
sciousness of sin. — New conception of the way of sal- 
vation. — New ideals of character. — Modern meaning 
of faith. — Our larger look backward. — Broader views 
of the grace of God. — New interpretations of the atone- 
ment. — New vision of the gospel as social .... 129 



CONTENTS xi 

VI 

IMMORTALITY 

The sense of the infinite. — Consciousness and molec- 
ular action. — Inability of the imagination. — Reason vs. 
the senses. — New approach through the evolutionary 
hypothesis. — The outcome must be worth the cost. — 
What life has already attained. — Man at the summit 
of the physical is a child in the spiritual order. — New 
light from personality. — Society of Psychical Research. 

— The resurrection of Jesus. — Personality and the soul. 

— We are potential persons. — The quality rather than 
the continuity of life. — Assumed by the perfect man, a 
premonition in imperfect men. — Tennyson and Brown- 
ing. — Need of a future to make life rational. — Man too 
heavily endowed for temporal conditions. — The " More " 
prophetic. — We trust the fidelity of God. — Words of 
Martineau. — An endless sleep desired by some. — Con- 
ceptions of the future. — Annihilation. — Final restora- 
tion. — The persistent choice of evil 165 

VII 

IMPROVEMENT 

The permanent and the changing in humanity. — The 
goal of life. — The essentials.— -Spiritual certitude. — 
The sons of Martha aud the sons of Mary. — The sim- 
ple and universal elements of religion. — The peril of 
mature years. — Schleiermacher's enthusiasm created 
by his new vision of truth 199 



THE MODERN WORLD AND THE 
MODERN MAN 



THE NEW LIGHT ON THE 
OLD TRUTH 



THE MODERN WORLD AND THE MODERN MAN 

I am deeply sensible of the honor of being 
selected to address this company of men. To 
consider with you the great themes of the 
spirit is indeed a high honor, and I shall seek 
to be worthy of this rare privilege by express- 
ing with utmost frankness my sincere convic- 
tions on these topics so vital to us all. At the 
close of each address the subject will be open 
for discussion. By the give and take of free 
debate the benefit of these evenings spent 
together will be reciprocal. In gatherings such 
as this we are continuing the best traditions 
of New England. This little stretch of terri- 
tory has been famous for industrial leadership. 
Men like you have taken riches out of these 
iron hills. Yet, notable as has been its indus- 



4 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

trial supremacy, New England has been espe- 
cially distinguished for intellectual astuteness 
and moral power. While our fathers toiled 
incessantly with the hand and with the brain 
for material wealth, they were not forgetful 
of the sovereign matters of the spirit. They 
realized that the things which are seen are 
temporal, but the things which are not seen 
are eternal. After the tasks of the day they 
gathered about their spacious hearths, and 
before the blazing fires 

" reasoned high 
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute." 

This habit not only sharpened the New Eng- 
land mind to finest subtilty, and toughened 
its fibre ; it created the rigorous New England 
conscience ; it gave to our fathers a profound 
realization of the significance of life; it en- 
larged and glorified their imagination, and 
nourished in them an august sense of eternal 
truths. For a body of business and profes- 
sional men to meet together at the close of 
the day to discuss the stupendous themes of 
religion is certainly in keeping with the noblest 



MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 5 

memories of New England. It places us in a 
great and holy succession. 

Doubtless you were all reared in the strict 
faith of the fathers and trained in its stern 
morality. I surmise that most of you have 
considerably modified your inherited religious 
conceptions, finding it impossible to look at 
life as your fathers viewed it. Being intel- 
lectually awake, you are aware that modern 
scholarship has removed many of the ancient 
landmarks, and that the new light pouring 
into the world from recent scientific investi- 
gation has dissolved many of the old creedal 
structures. Being absorbed in practical affairs, 
while you dimly know of altered conditions, 
probably you have lacked the leisure to inform 
yourselves of the changes which have taken 
place. You have left the shelter of the ances- 
tral faith and have not yet built for your 
minds a new home which is complete and satis- 
factory. For a man needs a domicile to pro- 
tect his mind from spiritual storms and terror 
as really as he needs a house to guard his body 
from the inclemency of the weather. I imagine 
that you often wonder how much is left of the 



6 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

old faith, and ask whether the new equals the 
old in power of comfort and in authority over 
conduct. Perhaps you even go further and 
question whether the men of to-day can have 
religious certitude and be as sure as were the 
fathers of the reality of the things of the 
spirit. 

My task is not the ambitious one of answer- 
ing all these interrogations. But according to 
my ability I hope to make evident and per- 
suasive the new approach to religious truth, 
to describe the knowledge which has come to 
this generation through its earnest study of 
nature and of man, and to set forth the essen- 
tial verities of religion as they are held to-day 
by constructive modern scholars. 

I 

The Modern World 

First, let us consider the changed world in 
which men live to-day. Dante has been called 
the " voice of ten silent centuries." In his 
"mystic, unfathomable song" the mind of the 
Middle Ages, its ruling ideas, its philosophy, 



MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 7 

find imperishable expression. The poet believed 
in a snug little universe which could be inter- 
preted by a complete system of thought. The 
earth he conceived to be the centre of the ma- 
terial creation, with heaven beyond the stars and 
hell underneath the crust of the earth. Man, 
in the exercise of his free will, merits the one 
or the other. That he may walk in the way of 
spiritual and temporal happiness God has pro- 
vided two authoritative guides, the Pope and 
the Emperor. A closely reasoned theology at- 
tempted to interpret all man's experiences with 
the divine. Through the fall of Adam the 
trail of the serpent lay over all humanity. Man, 
a finite being, could not pay this debt of sin 
against infinite holiness. An infinite penalty 
was demanded. Hence the God-man suffered 
to the full the punishment required by justice 
and canceled the obligation. By baptism the 
soul entered into the merits of Christ and was 
freed from the eternal consequences of sin. 
Whatever sins were committed by penitent 
spirits after baptism must be expiated in this 
world and in purgatory. For the redeemed 
there was provided a stately heaven whose 



8 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

angels were classified and whose hierarchies 
were named. For the reprobate there was an 
endless hell of " anatomized damnation-" 

Copernicus shattered forever this tiny shell 
of mediaeval cosmogony; the Eeformation 
challenged the infallibility of the papal system ; 
the political enfranchisement of the people 
destroyed the pretentious theory of the divine 
right of kings. But theology remained Ptole- 
maic and mediaeval. Men still believed in the 
six days of creation, they counted six thou- 
sand years since Adam, and they had a well- 
defined scheme for saving humanity from the 
results of the Fall. Within our own genera- 
tion this closed system of thought has received 
a blow as fatal as that which shivered the 
cosmogony of Dante's time. 

In 1859 Darwin published his " Origin of 
Species." This patient investigator did not 
originate the theory of evolution, as he is pop- 
ularly supposed to have done. The conception 
of a progressively developing order of nature 
was a familiar one to philosophers, but Darwin 
gave an exposition of the probable method 
of the origin of species which was at once so 



MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 9 

clear and so well substantiated that a philo- 
sophical speculation was transformed into a 
scientific generalization. Darwinism has been 
greatly modified and evolution is still an hypo- 
thesis, but beyond question the "Origin of 
Species " was the chief initial impulse to the 
movement of thought which has carried the 
modern man completely away from the stand- 
point and the conceptions of former genera- 
tions. His point of view, his methods, the pre- 
vailing spirit in which he performs his tasks 
are changed. He lives in a universe measure- 
less in duration and limitless in space. The 
conviction of a progressive rather than a sta- 
tic order, both in nature and in history, is 
fixed in the educated mind. It is as generally 
assumed that an academically trained man is 
an evolutionist of some sort as it is assumed 
that he is a gravitationist. In all sciences this 
generalization is recognized as a working hypo- 
thesis. Within our own generation its revo- 
lutionary influence has been felt in every de- 
partment of knowledge. The men now living 
have been required to look at the old faith in 
this new light. Some of you remember the 



10 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

clash of conflict when the new views first met 
the old, and all of us were born before the 
sound of battle died away. 

The theological implications of this new 
method of approach to religious truth are very- 
clear. The world, instead of being six thou- 
sand years old, tells its years by the hundreds 
of thousands. Man no longer considers him- 
self a newcomer ; he traces his lineage to a 
remote antiquity. Instead of the fall of the 
race in Adam, we assert the ascent of man. 
Life and destiny no longer appear simple and 
explicable, but open to us with fresh wonder 
and hope. 

II 

The Modem Man 

Because one lives in the twentieth century 
he is not necessarily a modern man. He may 
have the soul of a mediaeval inquisitor clothed 
in modish fashion. The modern man is one 
who is controlled by the spirit and tendencies 
which are characteristic of this age. He is 
different from his fathers because he has es- 
tablished a new starting-point from which to 



MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 11 

do his thinking; his habitual mood is peculiar; 
his methods are unique; old motives have 
been outgrown, and he insists upon examining 
truth with a searching test not always em- 
ployed in the past. Altogether he is different 
from the fathers both in attitude of mind and 
in habits of thought. 

Men of to-day begin their thinking from a 
new basis. The time-honored method has been 
to assume some prominent fact, such as the 
sin of man or the sovereignty of God, or some 
theory of inspiration and revelation, and upon 
this rear a logically constructed system of 
thought. The faults of this method are ob- 
vious. Disprove the major premise and the 
superstructure collapses, to the confusion of 
believers. We are seeking more secure founda- 
tions. We appeal from the authority of every 
spiritual Caesar to life. We would know what 
man has learned in his age-long experience. 
The laws he has discovered, the spiritual ad- 
ventures he has passed through, the intuitions 
he has developed, the religious consciousness 
which his long journey has fashioned, we be- 
lieve furnish the only sufficient facts from 



12 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

which to draw our conclusions. We base our 
thinking not upon an authority which may be 
questioned, or a metaphysics which may be 
disproved, but upon the facts revealed by ex- 
perience. Accumulated experience quickens 
insight into the nature of things. The mod- 
ern mind trusts more to its intuitions than to 
its logic. It highly esteems the universal and 
spontaneous judgments of spiritual men, for 
the supreme truths are spiritually discerned. 
To the facts of experience and to the intui- 
tions of the soul it entrusts itself. Its know- 
ledge of the foundations will enlarge, but the 
base is rational and secure. 

With so broad a field of observation the 
modern man must be free and open-minded. 
In a scientific age he must have that spirit so 
finely described by Mr. Huxley : " Sit down 
before a fact as a little child, be prepared to 
give up every preconceived notion, follow 
humbly wherever and to whatever abysses 
nature leads." Not since the creation have 
there been so many minds, free in their action 
and scientific in their methods, employed upon 
religious truth. It would be inconceivable if 



MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 13 

the harvest of knowledge and vision were not 
rich. 

The modern man is eminently practical. He 
has little taste for those lofty and refined spec- 
ulations which produce no perceptible differ- 
ence either in character or in conduct. He 
keeps close to the known, and to what ap- 
proves itself as vital to the individual and to 
society. He is not interested in a gospel which 
is largely occupied in showing how God can 
forgive sin, and provide a way of escape from 
the wrath to come. It must be able to save 
men now from the power of evil and the blight- 
ing curse of fear. 

Some of the old motives for living the re- 
ligious life are no longer operative, while others 
are receiving greater prominence. From primi- 
tive Christianity to the present day, supersti- 
tious fear has been a universal and sovereign 
compulsion driving men into the church. They 
crowded the sanctuaries and accepted the creeds 
through dread of something after death. Such 
fear is no longer a primal motive. Few to-day 
believe in the prison-house of torture which 
jso affrighted former generations. This rapidly 



14 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

vanishing motive is being replaced by two 
others, which, though never absent from the 
religious life of the past, are now more than 
ever prominent. One is the desire to be right 
with God and man. We know that these right 
relations must be achieved and sustained. We 
are aware that we come far short of fulfilling 
our own ideals. We are conscious that we need 
help. We are persuaded that the law of the 
spirit of life in Christ will set us free from the 
law of sin and death. We confess and obey 
him because he enables us to be the men we 
wish to be and to live the life we desire to 
live. Closely akin to this is another motive. 
We wish our lives to count for something in 
the world. We are anxious to make a real 
contribution to the race. Therefore we put 
ourselves in line with that Increasing Purpose 
which is unfolding through the ages. We wish 
to take our proper place in God's plan and to 
bear our share in the fight he is waging against 
the powers of darkness. Men to-day in ever en- 
larging numbers are living the religious life as in 
the Great Taskmaster's eye, to apprehend that 
for which they have been apprehended of God, 



MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 15 

The modern man looks at truth with a very 
different perspective from that familiar to the 
fathers. He has been so powerfully influenced 
by the doctrine of evolution that he is per- 
suaded that man grows in his apprehension 
of truth, and that God's revelation of himself 
is progressive. No perfect system of truth, 
or institutional plan, has come down from 
heaven to men to be preserved inviolate at all 
hazards. Ideas and institutions, he realizes, 
must be studied in their origin and develop- 
ment, and are not to be considered as crystal- 
lized into a permanent form. New light shines 
upon both church and doctrine when he per- 
ceives that they are not final, but are pro- 
gressive disclosures whose form is determined 
by historical conditions. 

The changed world has produced a changed 
man. With liberated mind, from a fresh point 
of departure, with an enlarged perspective, by 
new methods, governed by high motives, ap- 
plying a novel test to truth, the typical reli- 
gious thinker of our times approaches the reali- 
ties of the spirit confident that new glory will 
stream from the ancient fountains. 



16 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

The question of the date of the beginning 
of the modern world is being vigorously dis- 
cussed in Germany. The Reformation is the 
boundary usually assigned to the dominance of 
the mediaeval spirito But the reformers held the 
Catholic conception of creation, the fall of 
man, and the theology growing out of it. Most 
of them maintained the necessity of the union 
of church and state and the authority of the 
civil powers in matters spiritual. Their views 
of the world and their methods of Reasoning 
were not dissimilar to those of Catholic theolo- 
gians. The mediseval shadow has rested upon 
the world even until now. 

The truth is that the modern day has had a 
gradual dawning. Dante has been called the 
first modern man. His lofty spirit, like 

" a poising eagle, burnt 
. Above the unrisen morrow," 

catching some gleams of the coming day. At 
the Reformation the whole east was aglow. 
The morning waxed brighter when the church 
was separated from the state and the authority 
of king and bishop was cast off. But the mod- 
ern as distinguished from the mediseval world 



MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 17 

did not come in its glory and joy until the 
notion of a static universe was discarded, and 
men, knowing that the forms of reality are 
ever changing, felt free to follow truth into all 
her hiding-places. There have been free in- 
dividuals in all the Christian centuries, but 
ours is the first generation since the days of 
the primitive church which has enjoyed the 
freedom of faith. 

Ill 

Two Schools of Religious Thought 

Modern religious thinkers assemble them- 
selves into two quite distinct groups. One in- 
terprets spiritual realities through the medium 
of nature, while the other searches the spirit 
of man and his history. When the hypothesis 
of evolution first assumed sovereign import- 
ance, many men felt that now for the first 
time faith could rightly understand and defend 
its history. Some of them were trained scien- 
tists, and into the world of the spirit they 
brought the temper and method of scientific 
research, essaying the bold task of formulating 
religious conceptions through the medium of 



18 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

their enlarged perceptions of nature. One 
writer of this school who won popular recog- 
nition was Mr. John Fiske. That he was an 
accurate and convincing writer on scientific 
themes Charles /Darwin himself attests. "I 
never in my life," he writes Mr. Fiske, "read 
so lucid an expositor, and therefore thinker, 
as you are." The title of one of his books, 
" Through Nature to God," throws light upon 
his habitual method. He studied the " Idea of 
God," the " Destiny of Man," the " Life Ever- 
lasting," in the fresh light which had come to 
him through nature. Another author of equal 
fame was Mr. Henry Drummond. Profoundly 
interested both in religion and in the facts of 
the laboratory, he wrote " Natural Law in the 
Spiritual World," and the " Ascent of Man." 
These titles sufficiently indicate his attempt to 
study man and his spiritual life through the 
new knowledge of nature and its laws. Other 
writers less widely known found genuine en- 
richment to faith in tracing the wisdom of 
God in creation. " Through Science to Faith," 
" The Religion of an Evolutionist," " Science 
and Religion," are the names of books written 



MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 19 

by this school of thought, and they indicate 
its method. 

Quite distinct from this group is another 
body of thinkers, who, while they are not 
blind to the light from nature and work in an 
atmosphere modified by its influence, are su- 
premely concerned with the spiritual constitu- 
tion of man and his experiences with God. 
They believe that the Eternal has revealed 
himself in the personal spirit of man more 
fully and intimately than in the grandeur of 
the material universe. God is to be studied in 
his highest work, which is the personal spirit 
of man. Personality, therefore, rather than 
nature, is their master word. They affirm that 
the higher life of man reveals more clearly 
than the processes of the chemical laboratory 
the deepest reality of the universe. Personal- 
ity is the golden key unlocking the mystery of 
our world and of our cosmos, or there is no 
key. What is loftiest in man must be the best 
interpreter of what is loftiest in the universe. 
The spirit of man in its varied religious expe- 
riences, and especially that spirit as it has come 
to its perfection in Jesus, is the supreme fact 



20 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

for investigation. The thinkers to whom per- 
sons and personal relations are of supreme im- 
portance have written many books. The titles of 
some familiar volumes will sufficiently indicate 
this school and its trend of thought : " Through 
Man to God/' "Theology and the Social Con- 
sciousness," "Social Law in the Spiritual 
World/' " Personality and the Christian Ideal." 
These two groups are not antagonistic, but 
are mutually supporting. Those who find in 
man the key to the universe need to study the 
order and vastness of the cosmos to compre- 
hend the wonder and greatness of God, while 
the approach to him only through nature 
tends to pantheism and the submergence of 
personal spirit in the deeps of natural forces. 
We construct our truest conceptions of God 
and his ways by combining those revelations 
of himself which he gives through nature and 
through man. 

IV 

Religious Authority 

The modern man, acknowledging that new 
light has come to this generation through our 



MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 21 

enlarged views of nature and our more com- 
prehensive study of man, inevitably asks him- 
self whether the added light gives more or less 
certainty to his faith. Religion should speak 
with a voice of unhesitating authority. It 
should point out the way of life so clearly that 
the wayfaring man need not err therein. It 
must declare a law of conduct whose sanctity 
cannot be doubted. The light it sheds must be 
from the Eternal Fountain. Its premises must 
be clear of all suspicion of being the shining 
and phantasmal dreams of men. We have re- 
ceived no new light, but rather fatal darkness, 
if the Rock of Ages does not appear more dis- 
tinct, more extended, and more impregnable. 
We have delusion and not light unless relig- 
ious certainty is increased. 

The mediaeval man had peace and joy be- 
cause an infallible church had spoken. Our 
fathers replaced the authority of the church 
by the authority of a book. If we give up the 
belief in verbal inspiration and in the infalli- 
bility of a hierarchy of priests, have we found 
something more credible? Has the assurance 
which made our fathers strong in battle, and 



22 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

gave our mothers calm in the night of their 
sorrows, been increased unto us ? 

A simple illustration will make clear how 
august and indisputable is the authority which 
speaks to the modern man. A friend, having 
spent the evening with Carlyle, was saying 
good night as the two stood upon the door- 
step. The visitor, looking up, remarked on the 
glory of the starlit night. The Seer gazed for 
a time on the inconceivable majesty of the 
heavens and then exclaimed, " Mon, it 's just 
awful ! " But suppose that Carlyle, after 
glancing upward, had said, " I see no stars ! 
I never heard of them ! What are they? I 
perceive only blackness above." The visitor 
would have been dumbfounded. Let us im- 
agine that he goes through Chelsea and Lon- 
don questioning all whom he meets, and that 
he finds that no one can see the stars or has 
ever heard of them. Amazement possesses 
him. He hurries to the library, but he can 
find no book which hints at any brightness in 
the heavens. He detects no intimation that in 
all the preceding ages any one has seen the 
stars ! He is the only human being who has 



MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 23 

had that vision ! He can draw but one conclu- 
sion. If he alone can discern the black depths 
above to be studded with stars, he must be 
subject to an hallucination. He may well doubt 
his sanity. 

But the facts are far otherwise. The same 
constellations he sees, Carlyle sees also. Every 
one in the city who looks up has the same 
perception. He finds that men in the Middle 
Ages were studying the mystic influences of 
these same clusters. The Hebrew Psalmist 
sang of their glory, and the Babylonians bowed 
before them in awe and wonder. He knows 
that the stars exist because of the testimony 
of unnumbered generations. They have seen 
the vision. They have tested it by every means 
available, and they have not been put to con- 
fusion. We live in unperturbed certainty of 
the reality of the stars, though no man was 
ever caught in the silver mazes of the Pleiades, 
or grasped the sheath of Orion's sword. The 
vision of the individual has been verified by 
the vision of the race. The universal conscious- 
ness has rendered its verdict in favor of lights 
above, and trained minds have discovered and 



24 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

explained their governing laws. The general 
consciousness, verified and interpreted by ex- 
perts, gives us certainty of the stars. 

Let us suppose that instead of alluding to 
the stars Carlyle's guest had spoken of God, 
human sinfulness, duty, and the Sage had ex- 
claimed : " God, sin, duty ! what do you mean ? 
Those words represent no thoughts that ever 
entered my mind, or any experience of my 
life/' The man would be puzzled and would 
doubt Carlyle's sanity. Suppose that he wan- 
ders about the city, questioning every one 
whom he meets, yet finding none who even 
so much as dreamed of a Superior Being. He 
consults the records of the past and finds no 
intimation that any man ever thought of 
Deity, or duty, or redemption. Poor man ! he 
realizes that an asylum for the insane is his 
proper home. 

But how different are the facts. To Carlyle 
the ideas of God, man's frailty, duty, are more 
familiar than the brightness of the stars. Their 
mystery and significance constantly fill his 
mind. Every man in England and throughout 
the world knows something of their meaning. 



MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 25 

In the eighteenth century Wesley proclaimed 
a gospel of reconciliation. In the thirteenth 
century the Schoolmen pondered the Al- 
mighty's way of redemption. In ancient Greece 
iEschylus lifted the drama to the elevation 
of moral ideas. Upon the banks of the Nile, 
in Nineveh, in Jerusalem, these conceptions 
were familiar. Humanity's consciousness of 
spiritual realities resembles in its universality 
its sense of physical reality. Germany's most 
profound philosopher, Immanuel Kant, once 
declared : " Two things fill my soul with al- 
ways new and increasing wonder and awe, 
and often and persistently my thought busies 
itself therewith : — the starry heavens above 
me and the moral law within me." Kant was 
as well aware of his moral personality and its 
necessary connections with an august moral 
order as he was of the material splendors above 
his head. Men have experienced a material 
world, and they believe in it. They have also 
experienced a spiritual world. They have come 
in contact with God, and they have been per- 
suaded that from the Eternal there has come 
to them light, and wisdom, and power. The 



26 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

sovereign religious ideas are the expression 
of the thinking and life of the race. 

Moreover, the universal religious experience 
finds illumination and exposition in the poets, 
prophets, philosophers, and spiritual leaders of 
all peoples. These loftiest spiritual geniuses are 
nourished, trained, and made strong by a world 
of unseen realities in which they habitually 
live. Deep-souled men, their beings are rooted 
in the hidden power which binds together 
the things that are seen ; sensitive men, they 
hear and interpret that still, small voice which 
speaks its mystic word amid the jangling noises 
of the world. These men are experts, and the 
concurrent testimony of experts must be our 
standard in spiritual as in other matters. He 
who stands upon the mountain-top and sees 
the farthest can speak authoritatively to those 
below. And the One whose name is above 
every name, the supreme spiritual mind of the 
world, must be the ultimate authority. 

The basis of our certitude in religion is our 
personal experience with God, corrected and 
validated by the experiences of countless gen- 
erations of men, interpreted by seers and meas- 



MODERN WORLD AND MODERN MAN 27 

ured and explained by the words, the spirit, 
the life of Jesus. 

The authority of the mediaeval man was 
the thought and experience of the Roman 
Church as formulated by its Councils and its 
Popes. The authority of the Puritans was a 
Book which contained the records of God's 
way with a peculiar people and his fullest dis- 
closure in Christ. We have all that the Catho- 
lic has, plus the testimony of the Spirit as he 
has spoken in all communions during the Chris- 
tian centuries. Like the Puritans we treasure 
the faith of the Hebrews, but we verify our 
conclusions by the ways of God with all tribes 
and nations. And with the Holy Church 
throughout the world we look to the mind of 
Christ as the complete expression and suffi- 
cient standard of spiritual truth. 

" The great and indeed the only ultimate 
source of our knowledge of nature and of her 
laws," says Sir John Herschel, " is experience, 
by which we mean not the experience of one 
man only, or of one generation, but the accu- 
mulated experience of all mankind in all ages, 
registered in books, or recorded in tradition." 



28 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

We live in a spiritual as well as in a physical 
world, and we learn its reality and its laws in 
the same way — by the experience of all ages 
revealed and uttered by the most competent 
minds. 

What better lamp is there to guide our feet 
than the accumulated wisdom of thousands of 
generations of righteous men ? What court of 
final appeal is so near infallibility as the relig- 
ious life of the race explained and attested by 
its supreme spiritual leader ? 

" And I heard behind me," said St. John, 
" a great voice, as of a trumpet ... as the 
voice of many waters." That clear and multi- 
tudinous voice, coming out of the past, and 
uttering itself through the lips of Jesus, is our 
authority, and it is sufficient. " Behold the 
days come that I will make a new covenant 
with the house of Israel. I will put my law in 
their inward parts, and in their hearts will I 
write it." This inner book of the law, written 
by the finger of God in human hearts, verified 
by experience, and expounded by Jesus Christ, 
is all the authority we need. 



II 

THE BIBLE 



II 

THE BIBLE 

The modern man has many difficulties with 
his Bible. He was brought up to believe it to 
be the inspired word of God, every recorded 
fact being genuine and every teaching true. 
It is so completely inspired that God dictated 
it to men who served as his amanuenses. 
Every statement must be accepted as author- 
itative, a text taken from Leviticus being as 
binding as one found in Mark. This strict 
theory of verbal inspiration has led to the 
formulation of many grotesque dogmas, which 
make religion appear irrational and ridicu- 
lous. A passionate outburst of the Psalmist, 
joined to the gorgeous rhetoric of Isaiah, and 
set into one of the sublime visions of the Seer 
of Patmos, has produced many an astounding 
doctrine. But these uncouth dogmas have not 
been so injurious to most of us as the belief 
that a book so inspired must be accepted from 
" cover to cover." To doubt the historicity of 
the Jonah incident, or to discredit the story of an 



32 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

axe floating upon the waters of Jordan, or of the 
sun standing still over the Plain of Ajalon was 
to question the very fundamentals of religion 
and to place one's self in the ranks of skeptics. 
We know the powerful influence which the 
Bible has had upon the institutions of the 
modern world. Its truths gave strength and 
grace to the characters of our fathers. Its sub- 
lime poetry elevated their imaginations, its 
exceeding great and precious promises were 
unfailing springs of comfort, its wisdom they 
followed as above mortal wisdom. Reverence 
for the book is wrought into the fibres of our 
natures as part of a noble heritage. We feel 
instinctively that any diminution of its spirit- 
ual authority would soon report itself in feeble 
men and in a devitalized nation. How may the 
Bible be unto us as unto our fathers the guide 
and way of life, and yet be reverenced with- 
out the degradation of our mental integrity? 

I 

The Records of an Inspired Race 

The first fact which appears, even to a cas- 
ual student of the Scriptures, is that they are 



THE BIBLE 33 

a library of sixty-six volumes, bound together 
under one cover. These writings from the pens 
of many authors have been brought together 
because they are the original documents of a 
supreme historical movement. The Jews were 
a unique people. As the Romans had a pecul- 
iar insight into those structural laws which 
bind men together, and could formulate them 
into codes for the government of the world ; 
as the Greeks had singular perception of the 
beautiful, and could give- it imperishable ex- 
pression in architecture on a sculpture ; so the 
Jews had an extraordinary intuition into the 
moral framework of the world. The men who 
most fully embodied the loftiest genius of 
their race experienced God and learned his 
ways. They sought after God and found him. 
Their talent was prophetic, as the talent of the 
Romans was administrative and that of the 
Greeks artistic. Under the providential gov- 
ernment of the world they were gifted for a 
special task. The Bible, considered from a hu- 
man standpoint, is a record of the unfolding of 
their religious genius. It recounts their adven- 
tures in their search for God, their blind stum- 



34 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

bling into darkness, their intuition of spiritual 
truths, their broadening vision, the fulfillment 
of the nation's essential spirit in the supreme 
person of the race and of history, Jesus Christ. 

Considered from a divine point of view the 
Bible is a record of God's progressive disclos- 
ure of himself through a nation to the world. 
To call it an inspired book is not so compre- 
hensive or so true a statement as to speak of 
it as the record of an inspired movement ; an 
assembling of the original documents which 
attest and interpret <a providential course of 
history through a chosen people for the relig- 
ious instruction of humanity. 

The structural ideal of our own nation is 
individual liberty under law. This idea has 
had an origin, a development, an interpreta- 
tion, and an incarnation. If some one should 
gather under one cover the Magna Charta, the 
Bill of Rights, Cromwell's speeches, Brad- 
ford's "Journal," the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, the Constitution of the United 
States, the speeches of Webster, the maxims 
of Benjamin Franklin, " Uncle Tom's Cabin," 
the impassioned verse of Whittier, Lincoln's 



THE BIBLE 35 

" Gettysburg Address," the war songs of the 
nation, we should have a volume analogous 
to the Bible. Both would be a collection of 
original documents recounting the history and 
manifesting the spirit of a movement of world- 
wide importance. Both would disclose a prov- 
idential endowment and training of a great peo- 
ple in the interests of the race. Both would show 
the origin and trace the progress of a special 
purpose of God for the good of mankind. 

Such a conception of the Bible as a collec- 
tion of many books, selected and unified by a 
central truth, written by many men in differ- 
ent periods of history and at different stages 
of development, made up of traditions, war 
songs, laws, history, which greatly vary in 
value, yet reveal man's spiritual growth and 
God's progressive revelation, is now the one 
commonly held among us. 

II 

Oriental Method of writing History 
Higher critics 1 may differ among themselves 

1 For some of the ideas immediately following I am in- 
debted to Abbott's Life and Literature of the Ancient Hebrews. 



36 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

in matters of details, but there is no diver- 
gence of opinion regarding the composite na- 
ture of the book. Yet the history was written 
in a manner very distinct from the methods 
we use. A modern historian, after collecting 
and digesting his data, tells his story in a way 
clearly to indicate his individual contribution 
and judgment. He is extremely sensitive to 
the charge of plagiarism. By footnotes he 
indicates his authorities for important state- 
ments. By quotation marks he distinguishes 
the words and sentences he has incorporated 
in his narrative from other sources. The Ori- 
ental method is the opposite of this conscien- 
tious discrimination of the individuality and 
responsibility of each writer. As in their so- 
cial system, so in their histories, the individ- 
ual is lost in the whole. If the story is told, it 
matters little who tells it. Oriental histories 
are for the most part compilations. The author 
weaves together his documents and authorities 
into a continuous narrative. He uses no quo- 
tation marks, seldom states the sources of his 
information, and interjects without acknow- 
ledgment into a paragraph the words and 



THE BIBLE 37 

opinions of another. " It is the law of Orien- 
tal history writers/' says Kenan, "that one 
book should annihilate its predecessor. The 
sources of a compilation rarely survive the 
compilation itself. A book in the East is rarely 
recopied just as it stands. It is brought up to 
date by the addition to it of what is known, 
or supposed to be known, from other sources. 
The individuality of the historical book does 
not exist in the East ; it is the substance, not 
the form, which is held of importance, and no 
scruple is felt about mixing up authors and 
styles. The end sought is to be complete, and 
that is all." 

Ill 

The Priest and the Prophet 

The historical books of the Old Testament, 
besides being compilations, represent two 
clearly distinguishable types of mind, that of 
the priest and that of the prophet. With them 
we are familiar. These two have walked to- 
gether from the beginning down through all 
the centuries of religious history. The first 
considers himself to be set apart from others 



38 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

by a special ordination. He usually emphasizes 
this distinction by his dress and often by his 
manner and voice. He worships God by ritual, 
and is interested in institutions rather than 
in truth. His virtues are reverence for the 
past, obedience to authority, a love of order 
and decorum, and a developed sense of the 
beautiful as expressed in ceremonials and ar- 
chitecture, rather than in the stars and mead- 
ows. Generally he prefers cathedrals to moun- 
tains. His faults are an over-emphasis of the 
value of institutions. To preserve and honor 
them he will too often sacrifice the truth. He is 
the defender and protector of organization, and 
not a fearless seeker after truth in every field. 
His unquestioning subservience to authority 
dwarfs his reason and judgment, while his sep- 
arateness from his fellows tends to hypocrisy. 

The prophet is a born adversary of the 
priest, and his characteristics are antipodal in 
almost every respect. He is an individualist, 
and is impatient of authority. Believing that 
he meets the Most High more intimately in 
his own soul than in sacrament or in book, 
his conscience has for him august sanctity. 



THE BIBLE 39 

God he will obey and not man. All earthly 
powers are insignificant in comparison with 
the Judge of all the earth. The true prophetic 
mind is open to God's voice whether he speaks 
through nature, in the course of history, or in 
the drift of circumstance. It seeks to know 
the truth and willingly goes alone to obey it. 
The evil tendencies of the prophet are egotism 
and a defiance of needful convention which 
leads to brutal iconoclasm. His sense of per- 
sonal rectitude and his clear vision often make 
him intolerant of the opinions of others, and 
frequently he degenerates into a common 
scold. 

The priest is in danger of excluding the 
new and larger truth from his venerable institu- 
tions. The prophet often fails to incorporate his 
nobler visions in becoming and effective forms. 

Upon whatever century we lift the curtain 
we find the prophet and the priest confronting 
each other, always in earnest debate, often in 
bloody conflict. Their hostile spirits appear 
in ritualists and non-ritualists. Their charac- 
teristics distinguish high church from low ; 
the conservative from the independent. 



40 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

Now the shadow of the priest and the shadow 
of the prophet rest plainly upon the pages of 
the Old Testament. Each has interpreted his- 
tory according to his own sovereign principle. 
We can readily understand that if a man of 
prophetic mind were to write the history of 
England he would be most interested in the 
people themselves, their condition, the struc- 
tural principles of their civilization, the social 
and economic forces which moulded their des- 
tinies, and the genius and achievements of the 
national leaders. But one of Dr. Pusey's tem- 
perament would treat of the institutions of 
England, its throne and the laws of succes- 
sion, the kings in their religious character, 
and their attitude toward the Church. The 
progress of the country would coincide in his 
mind with the prosperity of the Established 
Church. He would describe its development, 
its great bishops, its charities and its rituals, 
and would approve or condemn all popular 
movements according to their influence on the 
National Church. 



THE BIBLE 41 

IV 

The Clue to the Documents 

There is indisputable evidence that both the 
priests and the prophets have written the his- 
tory of Israel in their characteristic mode, to 
make enduring the facts and truths which they 
thought of chief importance. We have in the 
Old Testament two narratives of God's deal- 
ings with his chosen people from the reign of 
David to the Babylonish Captivity, covering 
a period approximately from 1000 to 600 B.C. 
Two historians survey the same four centuries, 
yet how different is their spirit, and how di- 
verse are their judgments of the events in the 
national history which best reveal Jehovah's 
character and purposes. First and Second 
Chronicles, practically one book, are evidently 
written by an ecclesiastic who identified the 
religion of the Hebrews with its churchly 
form. He tells of the organization of the 
priestly hierarchy, he records minutely the 
genealogies of the tribes, gives a careful list 
of the cities of the Levites, exalts the glory 
of Solomon, and elaborately describes the 



42 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

building of the Temple and its ceremonies. 
He is evidently a high churchman who consid- 
ers religion to be inseparable from Jerusalem, 
the Temple worship, and the formal priesthood. 
The Temple is the centre of the world, and 
Judah is God's peculiar people. After the 
federation of the ten tribes they ceased to 
interest this writer. The deeply instructive, 
romantic career of Elijah is passed over, for 
he is not of the succession ! He is not the 
robed priest ministering at the altar ! He is 
ignored as a high church historian would 
ignore Wesley. Northern Israel, being sepa- 
rated from the Temple, is as uninteresting to 
this priestly writer as the nonconformists of 
England would be to an ardent Puseyite. 

Covering the same period we have First and 
Second Kings, one book in two volumes. 
This narrative as clearly came out of the pro- 
phetic school as Chronicles issued from the 
priestly. Here alone we have reported the se- 
vere and stormy character of Elijah and the 
marvelous activities of Elisha. When kings 
appear on the scene, it is that they may form 
the background to set off the greater grandeur 



THE BIBLE 43 

of the prophet. The writer does not hesitate 
to describe the pollution of the Temple and the 
sins of the priests. So thoroughly prophetic 
is the Book of Kings in its spirit and inter- 
ests that Jewish tradition assigned its author- 
ship to Jeremiah, while good critics affirm that 
Chronicles and Ezra were originally one book. 
The difference in the documents treating 
of the history of Israel from David onward 
naturally gave scholars the clue to the diver- 
gencies of statement and the peculiarities of 
style found in the annals preceding the reign 
of that monarch. They noticed that in certain 
portions of Genesis God was always spoken of 
as Jehovah, and that these sections have a 
marked individuality of style. In other por- 
tions God is named by the Hebrew word 
JElohirriy and the style and interest of those 
parts are easily distinguishable from the Jeho- 
vah section. It would seem, then, to be an 
easy matter to separate the early history into 
two original documents, the Jehovistic and 
the Elohistic ; and where the words Lord God 
are used, or Jehovah Elohim, to say that the 
two documents were here combined. This at 



44 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

first was the easy solution, but further investi- 
gation showed that certain sections of Genesis 
used the word Elohim and yet were decidedly 
similar in style to the Jehovah documents and 
sustained its assertions of facts, while other 
Elohim sections were written in a very differ- 
ent style and contradicted the Jehovistic docu- 
ments in important matters. This discovery 
has led to the conclusion that the early his- 
tory of Israel as we have it is a composite of 
at least three principal documents, known re- 
spectively as "J," "E," and "P"; the latter 
so called because it is thoroughly priestly in 
form and is preoccupied with the same inter- 
ests as the Book of Leviticus and the priestly 
sections of Exodus and Numbers. 

V 

The Story of the Hebrew People 

Instead of entering upon a discussion of the 
documentary structure of the Old Testament, 
which would necessarily be somewhat dry, I 
can best present the nature and origin of the 
Scriptures by giving in brief outline the story 
of the development of the Hebrew people, or 



THE BIBLE 45 

of God's progressive revelation of his charac- 
ter and purposes to them, as it has been recon- 
structed by modern scholars. 

About the year 1500 B.C. there was a mi- 
gration of Semitic people from Mesopotamia, 
along the well-trodden ways of commerce, 
toward those lands in southwestern Asia which 
were under the powerful protection of Egypt, 
then the dominant empire of the world. In 
this migration were probably the ancestors of 
Moab, Ammon, and Edom, as well as Israel. 
Many scholars maintain that the patriarchs 
were historic characters, and that the story of 
their lives is authentic biography. Some, how- 
ever, consider these interesting tales to be the 
sagas of a primitive people and the personifi- 
cation of tribal characteristics. There is cer- 
tainly much in the record, similar to the tradi- 
tional and poetic elements in the earliest annals 
of all great peoples, to sustain this conclusion. 

Under the stress of famine the Hebrews 
moved into Egypt and settled down in the pas- 
ture lands of the Nile Delta about the year 
1400 B.C. As the residence in Egypt lasted 
about three generations, or approximately a 



46 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

hundred years, we may place the date of the 
Exodus around the year 1300. Under a great 
leader, who was either Moses, or, as some one 
has wittily said, another man of the same name, 
they succeeded in freeing themselves from their 
Egyptian taskmasters. To avoid the border for- 
tresses, Moses led the people to the desert by 
way of the Red Sea, crossing at a favorable 
point. At Mount Sinai he held high communion 
with Jehovah. Here by this rugged and storm- 
encircled mountain a nation was organized 
and a spiritual religion was born. Moses had 
been trained in all the learning of the Egypt- 
ians. Rawlinson, in his " History of Egypt," 
informs us that u the primary doctrine of the 
esoteric religion undoubtedly was the real es- 
sential unity of the Divine Nature. The sacred 
texts taught that there was a single Being, 
'the sole producer of all things, both in heaven 
and earth, himself not produced of any' . . . 
6 the only true living God, self-originated ' . . . 
6 who exists from beginning ' . . . ' who made 
all things, but has not himself been made.' " 
This pure spirit, perfect in wisdom, goodness, 
and power, was not to be represented by any 



THE BIBLE 47 

symbol, and his name was incommunicable. 
The deities of popular mythology were either 
his attributes personified or nature deified. 

This high God, who was a philosophical 
abstraction to the wise men of Egypt, was to 
Moses the supreme Reality. To this true God, 
the statesman-prophet would dedicate the peo- 
ple. They were to be holy because he was holy. 
They, on their part, were to serve only him, 
and he in return would be their God and give 
them national prosperity. It was the privilege 
of Moses to do what no man had done before. 
He rooted morality more deeply in religion, 
and organized a nation around the central idea 
that the sovereign duty of the individual and 
of the nation was to obey a holy God. Lofty 
minds before his day had framed a spiritual 
conception of the Ultimate Reality. Other law- 
givers had guarded individual rights and social 
morality by the sanctions of religion. Moses 
rendered a twofold service. As a prophet he 
made impressive the ethical nature of religion, 
and as leader he made the union of morality 
with religion the organic law of a great people. 
He created a commonwealth whose corner- 



48 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

stone was neither commerce nor militarism, 
but obedience to God. 

His imperishable monument is the Ten 
Commandments, or the Ten Words. Ewald 
gives the original form as follows : — 

I am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee out of 
the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 



1. Thou shalt have no other god before me. 

2. Thou shalt not make to thee any image. 

3. Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy 
God in vain. 

4. Thou shalt remember the Sabbath day to 
sanctify it. 

5. Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother. 

II 

1. Thou shalt not kill. 

2. Thou shalt not commit adultery. 

3. Thou shalt not steal. 

4. Thou shalt bear no false witness against thy 
neighbor. 

5. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. 

The fuller and more familiar form was pro- 
duced by the addition of explanatory clauses. 



THE BIBLE 49 

These Ten Words are the introduction to the 
Book of the Covenant, the oldest book that 
is incorporated completely in the text of the 
Scriptures. This venerable book, which com- 
prises Exodus twentieth, twenty-first, twenty- 
second, twenty-third, and perhaps the first 
eight verses of the twenty-fourth, contains the 
substance of the Mosaic legislation. "The 
book is as remarkable for what it omits as 
for what it contains. It is practically silent 
respecting any future life, any sacrificial sys- 
tem, any ecclesiastical ritual, any organized 
priesthood, any form of what was then uni- 
versally and is even now generally termed re- 
ligious duty. It is purely spiritual in its con- 
ception of God and of his worship, and wholly 
non-ritualistic and almost exclusively ethical 
in its interpretation of the divine will." 

There are many scholars who are inclined 
to deny the Mosaic authorship of the Deca- 
logue. Its simple and austere morality and its 
evident monotheism seem too exalted for so 
early an age. Therefore they assign it to the 
period of the prophets, when the religious 
consciousness of the nation was more fully 



50 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

developed. Undoubtedly the conceptions and 
practice of the common people were far below 
the lofty standards of the Book of the Cove- 
nant, just as the actual morality of Christen- 
dom does not conform to the Sermon on the 
Mount. If so great a summary of religion as 
the Decalogue came into Jewish history at a 
later date, why did it produce no ripple of 
agitation ? As Bruce has well inferred, if the 
writing of the law by Ezra was duly chroni- 
cled, it is impossible that "the grandest part 
of that law, the very essence and kernel of 
Israel's religion, steals into existence without 
a father and without a date ! " 

After the death of Moses there followed the 
conquest of Palestine. The work was only 
partially successful. Enough of the original 
inhabitants remained to be a source of con- 
stant annoyance and corruption. The tribes 
were scattered. The sense of national unity 
was weak. There was no central capital or 
sanctuary. John Fiske has affirmed that the 
period between the close of our American 
Revolution and the adoption of the Constitu- 
tion was the most critical period in our his- 



THE BIBLE 51 

tory. During the two hundred and fifty years 
under the Judges the tribes were in much the 
same condition as our thirteen states. The 
looseness of their organization was a constant 
source of weakness. A strong central govern- 
ment was sorely needed. A king finally was 
chosen, but he proved not to be great enough 
to call out the united loyalty of the people. 
After Saul came David ; one of those continen- 
tal characters whose nature stretched through 
every zone of power. He changed the army 
from a mob into an organized body, with cap- 
tains of tens and captains of hundreds. With 
these disciplined troops he won a succession of 
victories. The people were united by a com- 
mon loyalty. They changed from an agricul- 
tural to a commercial nation, and wealth in- 
creased. The reign of Solomon was splendid 
because he completed the work of his father. 
His task was to unify further the tribes into 
a nation. To do this he built a magnificent 
temple at Jerusalem to be the centre of the 
people's pride and worship. He entered into 
many matrimonial alliances, not because he was 
more sensuous than other Oriental despots, 



52 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

but as a policy of statecraft. He would make 
the house of David stronger than the house 
of Saul by a multitude of state marriages. 
Moreover, in his great wisdom, he opened 
the ways of commerce with surrounding peo- 
ples, that the energy of his subjects might be 
expended in the acquisition of wealth, rather 
than in civil war. During his long reign, 
by his sagacity and the weight of his personal 
influence, he held together a turbulent and 
disunited people. After his death the inevit- 
able separation came. 

As yet no one had written a continuous his- 
tory of the people, but the splendor of the 
reigns of David and Solomon would not un- 
naturally excite an ambition to set in order 
the events from the beginning. The Israelites 
were indeed not without a literature. Besides 
the Book of the Covenant there were the 
Song of Deborah and the Lament of David 
over Saul and Jonathan. There were many 
memoirs and annals, like the Book of Jasher, 
the Wars of the Lord, the Book of Samuel 
concerning the Kingdom, the Chronicles of 
David, the Acts of Solomon, the Acts of Na- 



THE BIBLE 53 

than, Samuel and Gad, the Book of Jehu, the 
Sayings of the Seers, besides many psalms and 
proverbs. About the year 825, while Elisha 
was prophesying in northern Israel, there oc- 
curred in Judah, under Joash, a pronounced 
awakening of intellectual and spiritual activ- 
ity. The prophetic party was in the ascend- 
ancy, and out of some school of the prophets 
there issued the first continuous narrative from 
the creation to the time of the monarchy. The 
purpose of the authors was both to incorpor- 
ate everything that would throw light on early 
conditions and also to illustrate Jehovah's 
dealings with his people. The style of the 
narrative is free and pleasing, the characters 
are distinctly sketched, dialogue is frequently 
employed, and the vocabulary is picturesque 
and dramatic. The Deity is called Jehovah, 
and he is conceived, not as a spirit dwelling 
in sanctity above the earth, but as one who 
enters intimately into relationship with men. 
He walks in the garden at the cool of the day ; 
he descends to learn what the children of men 
are doing at Babel ; he speaks from the burn- 
ing bush. Jehovah is so truly a glorified hu- 



54 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

man that he challenges love and obedience. 
The story is told with the dramatic fervor and 
simplicity of poetry. The ethics of the writer 
are clear and simple. To do Jehovah's will in 
thought and deed is one's whole duty. Right 
and wrong are not determined by abstract 
principles, but are conceived as loyalty or dis- 
loyalty to the divine will. 

This document is called " J " because it is 
supposed to be Judsean in its origin and be- 
cause the Deity is designated as Jehovah. It 
is thoroughly prophetic, both in purpose and 
in sympathies. It constitutes about one third 
of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, 
Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. 

Some seventy-five years later, during the 
days of the prophet Amos, or about 750 B.C., 
a second narrative appeared. In this history, 
the southern shrine, Hebron, is ignored, and 
the northern shrines, Bethel and Shechem, are 
made prominent. In the stories of Joseph, 
Reuben instead of Judah is recognized as 
leader. Much space is given to the life of 
Joseph, the traditional head of the tribe of 
Ephraim, and to Joshua, the Ephraimite hero. 



THE BIBLE 55 

These characteristics have led to the conclu- 
sion that this document came from northern 
Israel. As Ephraim is the name by which 
Hosea, the greatest of its prophets, addressed 
northern Israel, it is called the Ephraimite 
prophetic narrative. Moreover, in all the ac- 
counts of events before Moses, the Deity is 
designated as Elohim. Its use of Elohim, and 
its supposed origination in Ephraim has given 
to this document the designation " E." 

The purpose of " E " is less historical and 
more distinctively didactic and religious than 
" J." It centres attention on the ideal theo- 
cracy rather than on the nation. The prophets 
and their work are considered as of more im- 
portance than kings and their administrations. 
The dominant purpose throughout the whole 
is to show that when the people submitted to 
God's will, as made known by the prophets, 
they prospered, and when they rebelled, they 
suffered. 

In the Judaean narrative, Jehovah walked 
the earth and visited Abraham in his tent. In 
this later history, God is not treated in so pic- 
turesque and anthropomorphic a fashion. He 



56 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

comes in dreams and by his messengers. Only 
to Moses does he reveal his face. From the 
darkness of the mountain, or from the pillar 
of cloud, he speaks to the people. The seventy- 
five years intervening since the production of 
the Judaean document had served to purge the 
traditions of much of their dross and to ma- 
ture in thoughtful minds the conceptions of 
the divine character and methods of revela- 
tion. 

Within a generation after this writing had 
been given to the world, northern Israel went 
into captivity and its sacred records, together 
with the writings of its great prophet Hosea, 
became the treasured possessions of the south- 
ern tribe. During the prophetic and literary 
activity resulting from the reformation under 
Joash, " J " and " E" were formed into a con- 
nected history in much the same manner as 
we to-day weave the four gospels together into 
a continuous story of the life of Christ. 



Ill 

THE BIBLE (continued) 



m 

the bible (continued) 

I 

The Hebrew Prophets 

In order to connect our account of the man- 
uscripts " J" and "E" and their blending, we 
have anticipated a little our interpretation 
of the development of Israel's religious con- 
sciousness. The greatness of a people is de- 
clared by the character of the masses and the 
quality of its supreme men. The eminent men 
of Greece and Rome were generals, states- 
men, philosophers, artists. The imperishable 
names in Israel are the names of her prophets. 
The genius of the nation was neither artistic 
nor military, but spiritual. 

The work of the prophets often has been 
misunderstood. They have been valued as men 
to whom God revealed the future, enabling 
them to foretell with accuracy coming events. 
Their uniqueness has been supposed to lie in 
the wonderful precision of their predictions of 



60 THE NEW JLIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

the future. This is an entire misapprehension. 
The prophet is one who speaks out. He utters 
the deep things of God to his generation. The 
prophets of Israel were men possessed of a 
fervent p ssion for righteousness. They felt 
the moral framework of the world. They had 
a profound sense of the Living God. In the 
events about them they saw the operations of 
his will and the glory of his presence. There- 
fore they interpreted the history of their day 
in the light of their vision of God. They were 
reformers and statesmen, and measured men 
and policies by the " higher law." Because 
their eye was single, their whole body was full 
of light. Comprehending the present so clearly, 
they were sagacious in foretelling the prob- 
able future. But prediction was an incidental 
characteristic of their work. Their supremacy 
consisted in that quality and elevation of moral 
genius which gave them insight into the di- 
vine character, and enabled them to make a 
holy and merciful God a reality to their own 
and to future generations. 

The eighth century before Christ was 
throughout the world one of extraordinary 



THE BIBLE 61 

power and brilliancy. The songs of Homer 
were assuming their final form ; Carthage had 
recently been founded ; and the laws of Ly- 
curgus were still new in Sparta. The year 776 
marked the commencement of the Olympiads 
in Greece, and 753 is the traditional date of the 
founding of Rome by Romulus. Over Palestine 
there arose a galaxy of minds, bright with 
rare religious genius. It was a time of tran- 
quillity in both northern and southern Is- 
rael. Riches were increasing ; the worship of 
Jehovah was never more inspiring, yet the 
priests were worldly and there was no open 
vision. If the spiritual life of the people be 
not choked by materialism, a spiritual awak- 
ening must come speedily. The first of the 
divine messengers was Amos, the Hebrew Car- 
lyle, the founder and purest type of a new 
order of prophecy. Reared in that same wil- 
derness, twelve miles south of Jerusalem, 
where afterwards John the Baptist was trained 
and Christ was tempted, he grew up clean of 
heart and austere in morals. His message was 
the retributive justice of God. Before Jeho- 
vah all men are equal; let them adjust them- 



62 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

selves to this Power which makes for right- 
eousness. 

A younger contemporary of Amos was 
Hosea ; a man of finer fibre and more sympa- 
thetic heart. He was the first of the prophets 
to preach a gospel of love, and his lesson was 
learned in the deeps of bitter experience. We 
can reconstruct his pathetic story by reading 
between his cryptic lines. In the days of his 
youth he loved and won the voluptuous 
beauty, Gomer. Soon after marriage he sus- 
pected her fidelity, but he did not cast her 
off. Finally she left his home to become a 
common wanton of the streets, and at last was 
sold as a slave. Yet her husband's solicitude 
followed her into her degradations and he paid 
the price of her ransom. 

" Weeping blinding tears, 
I took her to myself and paid the price 
(Strange contrast to the dowry of her youth 
When first I wooed her) ; and she came again 
To dwell beneath my roof." 

But he could not restore her to the old re- 
lationship until her soul was purified by works 
meet for repentance. In the fires of his expe- 



THE BIBLE 63 

rience Hosea found his evangel. " If I," he 
meditated, " could seek after my erring wife 
until I won her back to purity, will not Jeho- 
vah in leal love seek after his people, even in 
their sin?" This Old Testament tale of the 
Prodigal Wife anticipates and parallels the 
pure gospel of the parable of the Prodigal 
Son. The interpretation of Hosea's experiences 
does not lie upon the surface of the prophet's 
pages, but the story is there plain enough, if 
we remember that men in ancient times learned 
their religious lessons in the same way that we 
learn ours. 

Greater than either of his predecessors was 
Isaiah. He was a lad when Amos was prophe- 
sying at Bethel, and began his career while 
Hosea was writing his last pages. He was 
more fortunate than they in birth and station, 
and was gifted with an eloquence so rhyth- 
mical and stately that it has been the admira- 
tion of subsequent ages. It was in the year 
King Uzziah died, 740 B.C., that he beheld that 
vision of the holiness and nearness of God 
which was his commission as a prophet. To 
Isaiah's anointed eyes God was a devouring fire 



64 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

in Israel, burning up all falsehood and evil. He 
was also head of the nations, working through 
them to carry out his holy purposes. 

A contemporary of the statesman-prophet 
Isaiah was Micah, a yeoman of an obscure vil- 
lage, who was called to be an evangelist. He 
is remembered to-day for that incomparable 
definition of religion which called forth this 
burst of admiration from Mr. Huxley : "In the 
eighth century before Christ, in the heart of 
a world of idolatrous polytheism, the Hebrew 
prophets put forth a conception of religion 
which appears to me as wonderful an inspira- 
tion of genius as the art of Phidias or the 
science of Aristotle. i He hath showed thee, 
man, what is good ; and what doth the Lord 
require of thee, but to do justly, and to love 
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? 9 
If any so-called religion takes away from this 
great saying of Micah I think it wantonly 
mutilates, while if it adds thereto, I think it 
obscures the perfect ideal of religion." 

In 722, while Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah 
were still living, northern Israel was invaded 
by the Assyrians and a large part of the people 



THE BIBLE 65 

was carried into captivity. Henceforth Judah 
continues the ancient faith, but not without an 
immediate and violent reaction toward paganism 
during the reign of Manasseh. The heavenly- 
bodies were worshiped; altars were built to 
Astarte ; human sacrifices were offered ; and the 
Ark of the Covenant was removed from the 
Holy of Holies. A reign of terror followed the 
attempt of faithful servants of Jehovah to stay 
the prevalent corruption . For fifty years pagan- 
ism flourished, and the ancient writings with 
their lofty teachings were forgotten by all ex- 
cept a small circle of religious men who were 
associated with the Temple. 

It is darkest before the dawn, and after this 
night of paganism there was a brilliant awak- 
ening of the prophetic spirit. Sluggish, in- 
deed, would have been the life of the nation, 
if the momentous events of the time had not 
stirred its deepest soul. The civilized world 
was in the throes of revolution. The vast As- 
syrian Empire, that stupendous despotism that 
had long held the world in terror, was crumb- 
ling. The Medes, upon their terrible horses, 
were overrunning Asia and threatening great 



66 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

Nineveh itself. The atmosphere, so electric 
with impending change, could not but affect 
Judaea and evoke prophetic utterance. First 
came Zephaniah, with his wondrous song of 
doom — the "Dies irae, dies ilia" — the re- 
quiem of woe familiar to the whole Christian 
world. About 625 B.C., Nahum, in impassioned 
sentences, predicts the fall of Nineveh, and 
Habakkuk, eloquent beyond his contempora- 
ries, declares the retribution which shall humble 
the pride of the Assyrian. But supreme over 
them all, and yet the saddest, was Jeremiah, 
who looked forward to the time when religion 
should be free from all false restraints and be 
established upon the law written in the heart. 

II 

The Discovery of Deuteronomy 

In 621 B.C. a powerful revival broke out 
in Judah, caused not by the thunder of the 
prophets, but by the discovery of a roll in the 
archives of the Temple. In the twenty-second 
and twenty-third chapters of Second Kings 
we can read the account of the epochal event. 
Hilkiah, the high priest, places before King 



THE BIBLE 67 

Josiah the wonderful discovery, and the land 
is aflame. This roll was the body of our pre- 
sent Book of Deuteronomy. When we seek 
the origin of the code whose finding so stirred 
the hearts of the nation to repentance, it 
seems probable that during the persecutions 
under Manasseh some unknown prophet, in 
order to preserve the faith of the fathers, gath- 
ered together the manuscripts of the old law, 
wrote down the traditions of ancient wisdom, 
and made new application of Mosaic princi- 
ples to the condition of the nation in his own 
time. The whole he threw into the form of 
three great orations and two poems, and hid 
his work in the Temple library. When it was 
found in the days of Josiah, it was as though 
a holy past spoke to a recreant present. This 
voice from the venerated centuries awoke the 
nation to repentance and purification. 

The discovery awakened intense literary as 
well as religious activity. History was rewrit- 
ten under the inspiration of the lofty teachings 
of Deuteronomy. Joshua, Judges, Samuel, 
Kings, were all reedited. These Deuferonomic 
writers were not interested in exact historical 



68 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

investigation. They were not searching musty 
documents to establish the exact occurrences 
of the past. Quite the opposite was their spirit. 
As teachers of spiritual truth, they would trace 
the hand of God in history. Not the precise 
details of former events, but the spiritual sig- 
nificance of Jehovah's dealings with his people 
they would portray for the instruction of the 
present and future generations. Their national 
history appeared to them to teach one unmis- 
takable lesson, and the purpose of the Deutero- 
nomic historians was so to rewrite the annals 
of the Hebrew people as to bring this lesson 
into solemn prominence. It may be stated in 
a sentence : Unfaithfulness to Jehovah is pun- 
ished by calamities ; obedience is rewarded by 
material prosperity. The older histories were 
edited to emphasize this philosophy, and facts 
were modified and interpreted in its interest. 
The desire of the Deuteronomic historians was 
to abolish all local sanctuaries and to centralize 
worship in the Temple at Jerusalem. These 
local shrines had existed from antiquity, as the 
early narratives clearly prove. 

Yielding to the peculiar Jewish tendency to 



THE BIBLE 69 

think of all good laws as transmitted from the 
fathers, these editors assumed that the statute 
providing for one central sanctuary and for- 
bidding all others had been in operation since 
the Temple was built, or even from the days 
of Moses. Under this conception the Book of 
Kings was rewritten and rulers were judged 
according to their attitude toward the " high 
places." As none of the kings of northern 
Israel had worshiped at Jerusalem, but had 
maintained local sanctuaries, they were all 
condemned. This Deuteronomic rewriting of 
Jewish records gives us a document called by 
scholars " D," and is the third great constitu- 
ent element of the Old Testament histories. 
It is prophetic in its spirit, but as its object is 
to give prominence to the Temple and its wor- 
ship, it is priestly in its purpose. The central- 
ization of sacrifice or worship institutional- 
ized religion ; a distinction was made between 
clergy and laity, and the church became inde- 
pendent of the state. The benefit of this was 
apparent thirty-five years later, when the state 
was destroyed and the church survived. Pro- 
foundly as the decrees of the code influenced 



70 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

the religious life of the people in Josiah's day 
and altered their historical books, it modified 
quite as perceptibly the future of the nation. 
Henceforth the Jewish faith rests heavily 
on a book ; writings may be appealed to as 
against the living spirit; and the scribe can 
rebuke the prophet. The externalism of a re- 
ligion, housed in a temple and expressed in a 
ritual, will quell the spirit of prophecy. The 
priest will yet come to his own. 

Ill 

The Captivity 

Nevertheless, these same priestly elements 
are to conserve, in the immediate future, the 
very life of the prophetic religion. In 597 B.C. 
Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, carried 
into captivity ten thousand of the flower of 
the Jewish nation, and in 586 Jerusalem fell 
before him, and forty thousand went to weep 
by the waters of Babylon. It is an interesting 
question to ask why these exiles were not ab- 
sorbed into the Babylonian civilization, even 
as the ten tribes, who, upon their captivity, 
disappeared entirely from history. Why should 



THE BIBLE 71 

northern Israel be lost and Judah survive? 
The answer is that Judah had one hundred 
and thirty-five years more of national life than 
the northern tribes in which to fix more firmly 
the racial characteristics. But especially they 
carried with them into captivity a literature. 
Besides the history of their nation, they had 
Deuteronomy and the writings of the prophets. 
This literature kept alive the fires of patriotic 
devotion and perpetuated the traditions of the 
people. 

The captivity in Babylon exercised a revo- 
lutionary effect upon the faith of the exiles. 
Their hearts must have been shaken when they 
first beheld the capital city of their conquer- 
ors. Authorities state that it covered an area 
five times as great as London, and was sur- 
rounded by walls of incredible height and 
thickness, pierced by a hundred brazen gates. 
Contrasted with the majesty of this metropolis, 
Jerusalem must have appeared a country vil- 
lage. The most conspicuous object in this 
wonderful city was the temple of Bel, with its 
numerous shrines, its elaborate altars, and its 
golden statue of the deity, towering forty feet 



72 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

in height. Even the splendor of Solomon's 
Temple must have seemed tame before the im- 
perial magnificence of this conquering god. 
There must have been deep searchings of 
heart regarding the power, or even the reality 
of Jehovah. Every earthly inducement would 
lead the captive to forsake the national faith 
and become identified with the customs and 
faith of the victors. Judah was tried as in a 
sieve, and only the pure wheat remained. 

But the bitter experiences of the faithful 
remnant deepened their insight into spiritual 
realities and stung their genius into marvel- 
ous expression. Their calamities produced 
great men and imperishable literature. Among 
the captives was Ezekiel, both priest and 
prophet. He was an ecclesiastical statesman, 
cast in the same mould in which afterwards 
were fashioned Hildebrand and Calvin. As Is- 
rael was no longer a nation, he would make it 
a church. He would preserve the people by 
organizing their lives about religious institu- 
tions. As there could be no temple, except at 
Jerusalem, he would commit the people to the 
continual service of Jehovah by inducing them 



THE BIBLE 73 

to keep his Sabbath. Their purity from sur- 
rounding contamination and their observance 
of religious ceremonies would form their dis- 
tinctiveness as a people. But they were some 
day to return. The books of the prophets 
which they had brought with them clearly 
foretold this. To prepare for that time and 
the rebuilding of the Temple, Ezekiel issued a 
unique code, describing the ritual and defin- 
ing the duties of priests, which is found in 
the last eight chapters of the book bearing 
his name. Closely allied with him there was 
evidently a school of priests, who formed a 
centre of literary activity. They embodied the 
ancient ceremonial practices in a digest which 
is called the "Holiness Code" (Leviticus 17- 
26); they gave to the legal and ritualistic por- 
tions of the first books of the Pentateuch sub- 
stantially their present form. 

Literature and spiritual insight, as well as 
the formulation of the ceremonial law, were 
the outgrowth of the Captivity. It was the 
early faith of the Hebrews that Jehovah pun- 
ished sin with evil and rewarded virtue with 
prosperity. Calamity, whether visiting the in- 



74 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

dividual or the nation, was a sure indication 
that the law had been transgressed. But in 
the profound humiliation o£ the Captivity the 
righteous people were punished, while great 
Babylon, drunk with the wine of her fornica- 
tion, flourished in evident prosperity. Why do 
the wicked flourish, while the innocent suffer ? 
This question, as old as humanity, pressed it- 
self insistently upon the broken-hearted cap- 
tives. Their traditional solution of the pro- 
blem of pain, as the evidence of divine wrath 
against an evil-doer, was evidently inadequate. 
A more comprehensive answer, which should 
fit a world where the godly are afflicted, must 
be given. The sublime epic of Job is the solu- 
tion offered by some deep-souled captive as he 
meditated on the strange ways of God. The 
patriarch was a righteous man, sorely bereaved. 
His three friends came with the miserable 
comfort offered by the traditional philosophy 
that Job's misfortunes were retributions for 
his sin. Stoutly Job maintained his integrity. 
Then Elihu, a young man, yet with truer in- 
sight than that of the three friends, threw 
some light on the problem by affirming that 



THE BIBLE 75 

suffering is a method of divine discipline, a 
test of character. The climax of the drama 
is reached when God, who always utters his 
deepest wisdom to man out of the storms and 
contradictions of life, answered Job out of the 
whirlwind, asserting that majesty before which 
man always appears so pitiably insignificant. 
The divine voice does not solve the problem 
of pain, but it arouses in the sufferer such 
a glorious sense of the presence of Jehovah 
that the heart of Job is satisfied. "I have 
heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but 
now mine eye seeth thee." The vision of God, 
the assured conviction of his nearness and 
goodness, is the result of afflictions nobly 
borne, and is their compensation. 

Carlyle calls the epic " Every Man's Book," 
for it deals with a question which confronts 
every thinking man. The name of the author 
has not come down to us, but he has be- 
queathed to us, not what was incidental to his 
life, but his deep soul-struggle and victory. 
He shows us how one man found himself 
and found God. He also reveals the educa- 
tive power of trouble and its tendency, when 



76 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

rightly endured, to change a formal faith in 
God to a clear perception of his presence and 
loving care. Some scholars put the date of the 
book earlier, some later, than the Captivity. 
But it surely expresses most powerfully the 
experiences and questionings of that time when 
the traditional theodicy was broken, and larger 
visions of God and his purposes were inspired 
in the greater minds. 

Another majestic voice speaks out of this 
darkness to hearten the distressed captives. 
His name, too, has perished, but he is desig- 
nated variously as the " Second Isaiah," the 
" Great Unknown," the " Prophet of the Ex- 
ile." His writings are to be found in the lat- 
ter part of the Book of Isaiah, beginning with 
the fortieth chapter. The style of these chap- 
ters is so different from the language and 
thought of the first section of the book, and 
the historical situation is so evidently the con- 
dition of Babylon at the time of the impend- 
ing invasion of Cyrus, that it seems far more 
probable that they are the utterances of an 
unknown prophet in Babylon than that Isaiah 
in Jerusalem looked forward over one hun- 



THE BIBLE 77 

dred and fifty years to encourage the pos- 
sible exiles. Certainly no prophet in the Old 
Testament uttered more powerfully elemental 
truths in language of refined and elevated 
spiritual emotion than the unknown " Prophet 
of the Exile." The burden of his message is 
one of consolation. " Comfort ye, comfort ye 
my people, saith your God." 

This prophet is more than a comforter ; he 
is also an interpreter. His insight into the 
mysteries of suffering penetrated even farther 
than that of the author of the Book of Job. 
In his marvelous description of that mystic 
figure whom he calls " the Servant of Jehovah," 
he declares that suffering is more than a dis- 
cipline of individual character; more than 
the fiery way by which men are led into the 
immediate presence of God ; it is often vica- 
rious. The innocent suffers for the guilty, and 
by his stripes the sinful are healed. This is 
strange doctrine ; an absolute breaking away 
from the honored teaching that pain is God's 
wrath on the evil-doer. " Who hath believed 
our report ? and to whom hath this power of 
the Lord been revealed ? " Paul echoed the 



78 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

same faith when he exclaimed that the cruci- 
fied Servant is the power of God unto salvation. 
Besides being a clear-visioned interpreter of 
spiritual realities, the Prophet of the Exile 
had a statesmanlike comprehension of the sig- 
nificance of contemporary events and their 
bearing upon Israel's future. 

IV 

The Rebuilding of Jerusalem 

The most commanding and admirable figure 
of pagan Oriental antiquity was Cyrus the 
Great, a prince wise in statecraft, invincible in 
war,. -with a character so full-orbed and far- 
shining that tradition has thrown around him 
the charm of legend. As first Media and then 
Lydia fell before the armies of the Persian, 
the Prophet in Babylon exulted. Surely the 
deliverer appointed by Jehovah had come. "I 
have raised him up for victory and will make 
straight his ways ; he shall build my city 
again and he shall let my exiles go free." 
This confident prediction was fulfilled. In No- 
vember, 538 B.C., Babylon fell, and, in the 
spring of 537, Cyrus aided the Jews who 



THE BIBLE 79 

wished to return to the land o£ their fathers 
by contributions from the royal treasury, and 
even by restoring such of the sacred vessels 
of the former temple as could be found. To 
the number of about fifty thousand they re- 
turned. Doubtless as they set forth upon their 
journey the mountains and hills broke forth 
before them into singing and all the trees of 
the fields clapped their hands. They found 
Jerusalem a waste and the land desolate, yet 
when the season of the Feast of the Taberna- 
cles was come, an altar had been reared on 
the spot where had stood the altar of Solomon. 
But so severe was their struggle to win a live- 
lihood from a reluctant soil that it was seven- 
teen years before the building of the Temple 
began in earnest. 

In 520 B.C. the great work was undertaken 
with determination: Haggai and Zechariah 
being the prophets who encouraged the 
laborers. The Temple was completed in 516, 
and fifty years later, when the hearts of the 
people grew faithless, Malachi predicted a day 
of judgment and the coming of Elijah to 
purify the nation. 



80 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

The wretched condition of affairs in Jeru- 
salem was known to the Jews in Babylon. 
In the spring of 458 B.C. a company of about 
seventeen hundred men, besides women and 
children, set out for the home land under the 
leadership of Ezra the scribe. Soon after his 
arrival he caused to be read to the people, 
during a national assembly, the Book of the 
Law, i.e., the legislative portions of the Pen- 
tateuch, which had been compiled and elabo- 
rated by the priestly school in Babylon. Thir- 
teen years later Nehemiah, the cupbearer of 
Artaxerxes, requested and received the com- 
mission of Governor of Judaea. In the follow- 
ing year 444, the people bound themselves by an 
oath to observe the Book of the Law, even as 
their fathers in the good old days under Josiah 
had sworn to obey the Deuteronomic code. 

The commanding authority now given to 
the Law permanently determined the legalistic 
character of the national religion. Naturally 
the supremacy of legalism created a body 
of priestly literature which reinterpreted the 
whole history of the chosen people and gave 
us the final form in which the Old Testa- 



THE BIBLE 81 

ment narratives have come down to us. We 
have considered the documents " J " and " E," 
which gave us the early history of the people 
in the free prophetic spirit, and the document 
"D," comprising the Deuteronomic code. We 
now have reached the period when a new nar- 
rative, known to scholars as " P," that is, the 
priestly account of Israeli early history, as- 
sumes its final form. Its purpose is to tell of 
the origins of the ceremonial institutions and 
of the law. It recounts, in the first chapter of 
Genesis, the divine institution of the Sabbath, 
it dwells on the origin of the rite of circum- 
cision, it furnishes a dramatic setting in the 
scene at Mount Sinai for all priestly laws as 
found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. In 
the second half of the Book of Joshua it de- 
scribes the allotment of the land of Canaan to 
the different tribes. The style of this narra- 
tive is stately and its conception of God is 
most noble, as can be seen in reading the 
opening verses of Genesis. It was not all writ- 
ten by one hand ; later additions were made, 
but the early history of Israel was reshaped 
into practically its present form somewhere 



82 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

between 430 and 330 B.C. Thus the first 
chapters of Genesis were written in a late 
period of the nation's life. 



The Night of Legalism 

Out of this same priestly atmosphere came 
First and Second Chronicles, and the books of 
Ezra and Nehemiah. This period, which has 
justly been called the night of legalism, marks 
a distinct descent from the great day of the 
prophets. From Moses to Jeremiah the moral 
law was placed above ritualistic observance. 
The supreme ideal was a righteous nation. 
With Ezra we pass from Mosaism to Judaism, 
when the ceremonial law was elevated to a 
level with the Decalogue, and an aspiration for 
a holy church displaced the ancient hope of a 
righteous nation. Judaism soon degenerated 
into Phariseeism, the scribes sat in the seat 
of the prophets, and utterly failed to under- 
stand their freedom and moral elevation. 1 

1 I am not unaware that eminent critics give less import- 
ance to the influence of the Babylonish Captivity upon Jewish 
religious thought than has been credited in the foregoing 



THE BIBLE 83 

The encasing of the soul of Israel in the 
hard and narrow shell of legalism did not, 
however, pass without a protest. Especially 
did the law which commanded the putting- 
away of foreign wives evoke strong disap- 
proval. All Jews did not look upon aliens as 
hated of Jehovah. One broad-minded, gentle 
soul, who could not storm like a prophet, chose 
a surer way of rebuking the intense fanati- 
cism of the time by writing an imperishable 
idyl, telling the story of Ruth, a Moabitess, 
who had been received in the days of the 
fathers into the Hebrew commonwealth, and 
through the grace of Jehovah had been an 
ancestress of David himself. The truth of the 
universal love of God, here embodied in so 
charming a tale, must have entered into many 
lowly doors and done much to mitigate the 
intense hatred of foreigners. 

The fierceness of this disdain finds expres- 
sion in the five chapters (9-14) which are 
attached to the prophecies of Zechariah. They 

pages, and that different dates are assigned to some books, 
but I think the weight of authority sanctions the interpreta- 
tion I have given. 



84 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

are not the words of that prophet, as most 
scholars agree, but came out of the period 
(300-280 B.C.) of unrest following the inva- 
sion of Alexander the Great. All the East was 
being subdued by the leaven of Hellenism. 
Judaism was fighting for existence, and the 
bitterness of its hatred of foreign influences 
preserved its life. Here is a characteristic out- 
burst of the feeling of those days : " And this 
shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will 
smite all the people that have fought against 
Jerusalem; their flesh shall consume away 
while they stand upon their feet, and their 
eyes shall consume away in their holes, and 
their tongues shall consume away in their 
mouth." 

Before the spirit of prophecy finally died 
out of Jewish legalism, it flamed up in a most 
unexpected expression. Professor Cornill, to 
whom I am indebted for much that has gone 
before, declares that, after reading the Book 
of Jonah at least a hundred times, he cannot 
even now read it without deep emotion. " This 
apparently trivial book," he says, " is one of 
the deepest and grandest ever written." To 



THE BIBLE 85 

interpret the book as a literal record of facts 
is to make both the book and ourselves ab- 
surd. It is either an allegory, or a satirical 
romance. If the former, Jonah represents Is- 
rael, bigoted and selfish, called to declare 
God's will to the Gentiles. Failing to fulfill 
its world-wide mission, the nation is swallowed 
up in the Babylonish Captivity, and belched 
forth again. Even then Judah cannot believe 
that God has any destiny but destruction for 
the Gentiles. If the book is a satire, its essen- 
tial meaning is the same. It represents Israel 
as too narrow to comprehend the wideness of 
God's love, and the humanity and piety of 
other peoples, being content to sulk by the 
withered gourd, because the Gentiles are not 
devoted to destruction. 

VI 

Contest with Hellenism 

Israel in its varied history had battled with 
the nature-worship of Canaan, the idolatry of 
surrounding nations, and the imposing pagan- 
ism of Babylon. Its fiercest and most dra- 
matic contest, however, was with Hellenism. 



86 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

Alexander had overrun the known world with 
his armies. Upon his death in 323 B.C., at the 
age of thirty-four, a struggle for authority 
ensued which divided the empire into four 
kingdoms, Judsea becoming an Egyptian prov- 
ince. For a hundred years the Jews acknow- 
ledged the sovereignty of the Ptolemies. In 
198, to their unfeigned delight, they became 
part of the kingdom of Syria. The presence of 
the Greek in their land both charmed and ex- 
asperated the Hebrew. To some the extensive 
culture, the brilliant social life, the abounding 
joy of this western people proved irresistible, 
and they hastened to change their names from 
Hebrew into Greek, renouncing the austere 
rites of their country and assimilating foreign 
thought and manners. Antiochus IV, mis- 
taking the surface movement for the drift of 
the whole nation, rashly tried to obliterate the 
Jewish faith, and even ventured to sacrifice 
swine to Zeus on the altar of Jehovah. Under 
the Maccabees the unconquerable spirit of the 
Jews flamed forth, and for a brief period 
Judah was freed from the oppressor. 

In the heat of the contest the Book of 



THE BIBLE 87 

Daniel was written. The opening section is a 
call to have faith in God, while the second 
predicts the triumph of the Kingdom. It is 
history written in the form of prophecy. The 
actual author speaks in the name of a person 
who had lived long before. 

After this memorable utterance, two in- 
ferior books appeared: Ecclesiastes, reflect- 
ing the dominant mood of the corrupt Greek 
period, which held all things to be vanity, yet 
clinging through doubt and despair to faith ; 
and Esther, a romance describing the unbend- 
ing pride of the Jew, his faith in Providence, 
and his quenchless spirit of revenge, which 
exulted that seventy-five thousand of the na- 
tion's enemies were put to the sword. 

Passing thus in hurried review the main 
events in the development of the Jewish peo- 
ple and the literary landmarks they set up, we 
must not omit the Book of Psalms, a collec- 
tion of the religious lyrics of the Hebrew peo- 
ple from David to the revolution under the 
Maccabees, voicing the passions and experi- 
ences of nearly eight and one half centuries. 
Formerly it was believed that David, the sweet 



88 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

singer of Israel, had composed most of the 
Psalter. Probably not more than a dozen 
psalms came from his lyre. The collection, as 
it has come down to us, is practically the hymn- 
book of the Second Temple. It is an anthology 
of the sacred lyrics of the Jews, and preserves 
for us an invaluable memorial of the spiritual 
struggle and aspiration of a wonderful people, 
covering nearly the whole period of their ex- 
istence as a nation. Proverbs, also, is an as- 
semblage of the crystallized practical wisdom 
of the sages of Israel. They are more interest- 
ing and valuable to us than to our fathers, 
for we see in them, not the keen common sense 
of Solomon, but the gathered wisdom of eight 
centuries. 

As we have journeyed with priest and pro- 
phet down the centuries of Hebrew history, we 
have noted the growth of the majestic concep- 
tions of prophetism from Moses to the unknown 
seer of the Exile. In Ezra and Nehemiah we 
find the priest and the prophet, ritualist and 
moralist, meeting upon even terms. With the 
growing power of the priest, the vision of the 
prophet failed. Elaborate epramonmKsm and 



THE BIBLE 89 

the free spirit of prophecy did not agree. In 
the turmoil of the Greek period, Phariseeism 
replaced Judaism, and a further descent was 
marked. It was surely a decline from Isaiah's 
message of a Holy Nation to the Holy Church 
of Ezra. Later, for Holy Church the Pharisees 
substituted Holy Ego. In such extreme legal- 
ism the spirit of prophecy was smothered. Yet 
God makes the bigotry, as well as the wrath, of 
man to praise Him. We must not forget that 
the impenetrable shell of Phariseeism preserved 
the soul of the nation from the disintegrating 
influence of Hellenism, until one should come 
who was both prophet and priest, and who ele- 
vated the spirit forever above the letter when 
he declared that "neither in this mountain nor 
in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father. But 
the hour cometh, and now is, when the true 
worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit 
and in truth." 

VII 

The New Testament 

The reconstruction of the New Testament 
has not been so thoroughly accomplished as 



90 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

the remoulding of the Old. The traditional 
view that the four gospels were written by- 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is now pretty- 
generally abandoned. If the first genera- 
tion of Christians left any written records of 
our Lord's life, none has come down to us 
in its original form. Mark is considered to 
be the oldest of the gospels. The author of 
this book, probably John Mark, wrote down 
the evangelical story as he had received it from 
eye witnesses, from common report, and from 
such written accounts as were extant, thus put- 
ting in permanent form a general scheme of 
the ministry of Jesus. Our Gospel of Matthew 
is a revised edition of Mark, enriched by the 
insertion of material drawn from other sources, 
prominent among them being a collection of 
the Sayings of Jesus, coming not improbably 
from the pen of Matthew himself. The Gospel 
of Luke assumed its present shape by combining 
parts of Mark with parts of other documents. 
The substance of the first three gospels belongs 
to the period just prior to the destruction of 
Jerusalem. All scholars admit that in the 
fourth gospel the life and words of Jesus are 



THE BIBLE 91 

much colored by the reflections and personality 
of the author. The great body of conservative 
critics places the book at the end of the first 
century. The more radical and smaller school 
dates all of the gospels so late as to give them 
trifling historical value. 

The chief sources of our knowledge of the 
faith of the early church regarding Jesus and 
the meaning of his work consist : (1) in the great 
epistles of Paul, which antedate our earliest 
gospel — Galatians being written about the 
year 57, First and Second Corinthians in the 
same year, Romans issuing a year later ; (2) 
the material upon which our present gospels 
are constructed, which came from those whom 
Luke describes as " eye-witnesses and ministers 
of the word"; and (3) our gospels in the pre- 
sent form, which represent the faith of the 
church in the generation succeeding the death 
of the apostles. That faith has also received 
noble symbolic expression in the Book of 
Revelation, written to sustain the sinking cour- 
age of the church at the time she was suffering 
persecution under Domitian, about the year 
93. The dates of the various books is a ques- 



92 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

tion to be debated in a classroom, and does 
not belong to a popular discourse. It is suffi- 
cient to say that new light on the structure 
of the New Testament brings out more clearly 
the strong, wonderful outlines of our Lord's 
character, and reveals the growing experience 
of the church in his power as Saviour. 



IV 

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 



IV 

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 

Our theme this evening is the person of 
Jesus Christ. We shall not attempt the ambi- 
tious task of proving his divinity, but shall 
seek rather to indicate the modern method of 
approach to the mystery of his nature, and 
to interpret if possible the new light which, 
hidden from our fathers, shines upon us in the 
face of the Master. We tread a path back to 
him such as has been trodden by no previous 
generation, and the new approach discovers 
hitherto unknown features in him who is the 
central figure of the world. If you have walked 
along the shore at night when the moon was 
hanging low in the horizon over the sea, you 
have noticed that a pathway of shimmering 
silvery light led from you across the interven- 
ing waters to the Queen of the Night. As you 
proceed, the trail of light changes with your 
advance. Waves that a few moments before 
were bathed in splendor are now lost in gloom. 



96 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

Before and behind there is darkness, but ever 
between you and the glory that is in the sky 
stretches the bridge of light. This experience 
images the relation of Christ to his church. 
Men of the first century looked upon the 
Light of the World, and between their needs 
and him there gleamed a shining way. Men 
of the twelfth century gazed upon him from 
a very different angle. The way that had been 
glorious and clear to the believers of the first 
century was in utter darkness to the Chris- 
tians of the Middle Ages, but, lo, a silvery path 
led from him to their feet. The Christian of 
the twentieth century does not stand upon 
the spot where the fathers stood. He contem- 
plates the Master from a fresh point of vision. 
Where his fathers saw light, to him there is 
darkness. He does not come to the lordship of 
Jesus along the way of the miraculous con- 
ception, the testimony of the angels and shep- 
herds, the wonderful works of healing, or the 
proofs of the resurrection. That approach is 
shadowy, but he has his own clear path back 
to the Master, and it is not less glorious than 
that which rejoiced the former generations. 



THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 97 

It was stated in the first lecture that what- 
ever new light has come to us regarding spir- 
itual realities has shone either through our 
better comprehension of God's methods of 
creating and sustaining nature and humanity, 
or through our deeper insight into man him- 
self. Evolution and Personality are the master 
words in modern thinking. It was also noted 
that the new theology may be divided into 
two schools : one approaching religious themes 
along the leadings of the evolutionary hypothe- 
sis, the other emphasizing personality. Upon 
both of these highways we shall walk this 

evening, 

I 

The New Approach through Evolution 

The Christian evolutionist begins with the 
assumption that God's method in nature and 
history is progressive. The divine revelation, 
therefore, must be progressive, for the Infin- 
ite can make himself known in the finite only 
by successive disclosures. Such an ever enlarg- 
ing manifestation of the nature and purpose 
of the Creator there has been. First came the 
whirling star dust, then the habitable world, 



98 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

then the earth green with vegetable life and 
teeming with living creatures. Finally man 
appeared, the highest form of life upon the 
planet, and the culmination of an aeonian pro- 
cess. In each advancing step of creation more 
of the power and wisdom of God shone through 
his works. With the advent of man physical 
evolution seems to have ceased. Progress since 
his coming has been largely human progress. 
Man's improvement has not been chiefly phys- 
ical, but intellectual and spiritual. He has 
developed as a person, increasing in his per- 
ception of truth and becoming more responsive 
to the subtile pleadings of obligation. He has 
risen superior to the world of instinct and en- 
tered a higher sphere where reason persuades. 
He has exchanged the sovereignty of impulse 
for the commands of conscience. In this higher 
stratum in which his mind lives the authority 
of force gives place to the authority of love, 
and animal satisfactions become subordinate 
to spiritual ideals and quenchless aspirations. 
Man has passed the limits of the physical and 
has been born into the loftier world of the 
spiritual. Physically he is the last and finest 



THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 99 

product of ages of material development; 
spiritually he is a child in that vast world of 
freedom, joy, love, righteousness into which 
he has been ushered. It is not incredible, 
therefore, that, having begun in this new 
realm of the spiritual, he should grow up into 
the fullness of his stature. 

" So in man's self arise 
August anticipations, symbols, types 
Of a dim splendor ever on before 
In that eternal circle life pursues." 

It is believable that the house having been 
completed, the children born into the house 
will grow up into manhood and womanhood, 
and will learn obedience to the father and the 
art of living together. 

Or, to state the thought in another form: 
God, having begun a disclosure of himself, 
first through nature and then through the con- 
stitution and history of man, will continue his 
self-manifestation until all the fullness of his 
being that can be revealed in human conditions 
is made known. This perfected humanity is 
the kingdom of God. It is a universal incar- 
nation of God in mankind. This divine hu- 



100 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

manity is clearly promised in the Scriptures 
and has been the dream of prophetic minds. 
Christianity furthermore teaches that to bring 
about this universal incarnation, God has incar- 
nated himself in an individual. It declares that 
the Spirit of God, who moved upon the waters 
of primeval chaos, and who has revealed him- 
self as spiritual light in every rational soul, 
took full possession of one being, who was so 
pure that through him shone the glory of the 
Godhead, and so righteous that in him the 
divine will was fulfilled. 

It is sometimes claimed that the complete 
man should come at the end and not in the midst 
of the process. But it is perfectly scientific 
that a single type should first appear as the 
pattern and head of the humanity to be pro- 
duced. A vine-dresser in Concord, wishing to 
produce a sweeter and more luscious grape 
than any which grew in New England, made 
some twenty-two hundred experiments. Pin- 
ally he crossed the wild grape with the Isa- 
bella, and was rewarded by a grape of such 
value that it has become permanent in our 
markets. Other men, wishing to have this new 



THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 101 

variety in their vineyards, were not so foolish 
as to repeat Mr. Bull's experiments, hoping to 
reach the same result. On the contrary, they 
possessed themselves of a cutting from the 
original vine, whose life was thus perpetuated 
and multiplied until the Concord grape is 
upon all our tables. It is by the production 
and perpetuation of superior varieties that the 
vegetable and animal kingdoms are improved. 
By this same method is a new humanity be- 
ing created and made dominant. A man ap- 
pears unusual in excellence, a Moses, a Plato, 
a Confucius. Others emulate his virtues, but 
not afar off and apart from him. They draw 
near with open minds to receive light and 
power. The spiritual energy of the teacher re- 
produces his character in his disciples. They 
are conformed to his likeness, and the world 
is enriched with a new order of men. By this 
method Christianity expects to cover the earth 
with new creatures. In the fullness of time is 
born the typical spiritual man, a variant from 
the prevailing type. About him gather those 
who feel the spell of his greatness. They do 
more than imitate him. They put on his char- 



102 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

acter; they receive his spiritual energy; they are 
engrafted into his being, and are transformed 
into his image. Thus an original and distinct 
type of man is produced, a new humanity of 
which this archetypal man is the head. 

But in what sense do we call Jesus the per- 
fect man ? There is no evidence that he was 
the ideal of physical beauty. Neither have we 
reason to assert that his mind was stored with 
the learning of the world and that he was 
complete in every mental faculty and grace. 
We hold that he was perfect as a son of the 
Father, and perfect as a leader of other men 
into sonship. There was no flaw in his attitude 
towards God and man. No fault was in his 
spirit. He was complete in all those moods 
and dispositions of mind which are acceptible 
to God, and out of which naturally flow those 
activities and refinements which perfect hu- 
man character. "Nature through all time," 
says Le Conte, " struggled ever upwards until 
it attained life in organisms. The organic king- 
dom then struggled upwards until it attained 
rational life in man. So humanity struggled 
upwards until it attained divine life in Christ." 



THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 103 

Or, to state the truth in another form, the life 
of God which is partially revealed in nature, 
and which burns in some degree as spiritual fire 
in every human soul, flamed forth at last in all 
the glory that can shine through an individ- 
ual. This typical man conquers the world by 
reproducing his character in a type of men 
who shall inherit the earth. 

If Jesus is highest in holiness and spiritual 
elevation among men, it is certainly rational 
to speak of him as " God manifest in the 
flesh." As we know the Creator only through 
his works, we shall receive our clearest insight 
through his master-piece. The material uni- 
verse declares something of the power and 
wisdom of its Maker; but the spirit of man 
interprets, comprehends, dominates the world 
of matter. The moral personality of man is a 
loftier symbol than the physical world through 
which to understand the Deity. There is no- 
thing which has so much of God in it as the 
spirit of man. The spirit of man at its best 
is necessarily God's clearest manifestation of 
himself. No one of us will dispute the state- 
ment that humanity is at its best in the 



104 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

spirit of Jesus Christ. Through him we get 
our most unclouded insight into the divine 
character. He who is highest in humanity is 
our guide, interpreter, and lord, for we must 
love and obey the highest when we see it. 
Being the highest in humanity, he must be 
the supreme revelation of God in the flesh. 

Following this line of reasoning, how un- 
satisfactory it is to speak of the Eternal as 
" Force," or as " Infinite Energy" ! These are 
terms drawn from inanimate creation. Spirit 
is the more comprehensive word. It is a no- 
bler and more significant word, and of spirit, 
through our own consciousness, we have a more 
intimate knowledge than of force. When we 
call God a spirit, we are applying to the In- 
comprehensible One our most exalted symbol. 
He is more than force ; he is not less than 
spirit. When we have interpreted him through 
the purest, holiest personality in history, we 
have employed our best to think of the High- 
est. Into the infinite depths we have looked 
with our clearest lens, and the light which 
reaches us through that flawless medium can- 
not be ignored or denied. 



THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 105 

But while we acknowledge Jesus to be the 
head of humanity and his spirit to be our loft- 
iest symbol of the divine, we are less anxious 
than were our fathers to prove his separate- 
ness from humanity. We certainly refuse to 
debate concerning the same substance or like 
substance. We realize that we do not know 
the substance of a blade of grass, much less 
do we pretend to distinguish between the sub- 
stance of spiritual beings. We find that na- 
ture is loath to draw hard-and-fast lines. The 
mineral kingdom shades into the vegetable, the 
vegetable into the animal. There is a wider 
difference between the brain of a Shakespeare 
and the brain of a Hottentot than between 
the cerebral development of the lowest savage 
and that of an ourang-outang. What we fail 
to do in the natural world cannot with certainty 
be performed in the spiritual. 

"Draw if thou canst the mystic line 
Severing rightly his from thine, — 
Which is human, which divine ?" 

All we can affirm with assurance is that dif- 
ference in degree makes ultimately a differ- 
ence in kind. Christ as the head of a new hu- 



106 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

manity is in another order from that lower 

kingdom whose headship was in Adam. He 

is the first born among many brethren. He is 

humanity realized, and God revealed in human 

condition. 

II 

The Uniqueness of the Personality of Jesus. 

Let us turn from a consideration of the 
unique place which Jesus holds in the evolu- 
tion of the race to contemplate the mystery 
of his personality. The mood in which most 
men to-day study his life is very different from 
the characteristic mood of a few generations 
ago. Our fathers were attracted by the super- 
natural portents attending his birth ; they were 
amazed at his sovereign power over nature and 
demons ; they believed that the resurrection of 
Lazarus, and his own physical ascension, pro- 
claimed him Lord of life and of death. To this 
generation the miraculous is not a help to 
faith, but is rather a hindrance. It adds to our 
problems by making us question the credibil- 
ity of the records. We believe in the mighty 
works of Jesus because we believe in him. 
Such a tremendous personality must have had 



THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 107 

extraordinary and beneficent power over the 
infirm. Yet few acknowledge his spiritual 
preeminence through the wonder o£ his mir- 
acles. Jesus himself appears to have wished 
the evidences of his authority to rest upon 
other grounds than the mighty works. " Be- 
lieve me that I am in the Father, and the 
Father in me ; or else believe me for the very 
works' sake." 

Without raising the question of his miracu- 
lous power, we ask, What was there in the per- 
son of Jesus which compels us to bow before 
him and acknowledge him as Lord and Master? 
We cannot completely answer this question, 
for criticism has no spectrum to separate the 
colors composing the Light of the World. 
But there are some truthful affirmations to 
be made, which help us to comprehend the 
uniqueness of Jesus. 

Note first the phenomenal clearness and 
permanency of his consciousness of God's 
presence and character. 

We have reason to believe that while ani- 
mals are conscious they are not self-conscious. 
In man we find a sense of selfhood, a feeling 



108 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

of freedom and of moral responsibility, which 
give him a realization of his individuality. 
Mingling with this perception of selfhood there 
is in most men a perception of God. A multi- 
tude can say with Webster that the greatest 
thought which enters their minds is the thought 
of their personal responsibility to Almighty 
God. To the saints there come luminous mo- 
ments when their minds are pervaded with a 
sense of the reality of the spiritual world. God 
becomes more real to them than the sensuous 
world. He is exceedingly sweet and precious 
unto them. They perceive his goodness en- 
folding all things. All the leaves of their ex- 
perience are bound together in one volume 
of love. An elevated joy surges through their 
being. To the spiritually gifted these hours of 
exalted feeling and of penetrating insight are 
not rare. In such a mood Isaiah saw the world 
filled with God's glory, and Whittier wrote 
" The Eternal Goodness." 

And even to minds that are not distinct- 
ively religious these intuitions are granted in 
moments when the fountains of the great deep 
are broken up. St. Gaudens, writing in the 



THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 109 

midst of his grief over his friend B ion's death, 
said: " We know nothing, but a deep convic- 
tion came over me like a flash that at the bot- 
tom of it all, whatever it is, the Mystery must 
be beneficent. It does not seem as if the bot- 
tom of all were something malevolent, and the 
thought was a great comfort." Mr. E. L. God- 
kin, the late editor of the " Nation," had little 
of the mystic in his nature, yet in the time of 
sorrow the vision splendid was not withheld 
from him. " I know," he wrote, " that things 
happen for the best, and that our lives are or- 
dered by a beneficent hand. When my little 
darling left her father's house for the last time 
on Friday, I felt assured that somewhere a 
wiser and better father awaited her, and that 
in his hands she would one day become all, 
more than all, that I rashly and fondly hoped 
to see her in mine." 

This sense of the reality and goodness of 
God, which comes to most men in the profound 
experiences of joy or sorrow, and which comes 
to the supreme prophetic spirits in larger meas- 
ure and at more frequent intervals, was to 
Jesus a permanent possession. The presence 



110 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TEUTH 

of God was as real to him as were the moun- 
tains round about Jerusalem. He lived and 
moved and had his being in a vivid realization 
of the Divine Fatherhood. His vision of the 
Eternal Goodness was not an intuition born 
of an exalted mood ; it was a clear and steady 
spiritual perception. He did not, like others, 
mount into this sphere of knowledge in golden 
moments, only to sink back to a lower level of 
thought and feeling. In this lofty zone he 
dwelt habitually. God-consciousness apparently 
marks as distinct an advance over self-con- 
sciousness as self -consciousness rises above mere 
animal-consciousness. Dr. R. M. Bucke, de- 
scribing what he calls cosmic consciousness, but 
which I prefer to call God-consciousness, writes: 
" Cosmic consciousness in its more striking in- 
stances is not simply an expansion or extension 
of the self-conscious mind with which we are 
familiar, but the superaddition of a function 
as distinct from any possessed by the average 
man as self-consciousness is distinct from any 
function possessed by the higher animals. . . . 
The prime characteristic of cosmic conscious- 
ness is a consciousness of the cosmos, that is, 



THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 111 

of the life and order of the universe. Along 
with the consciousness of the cosmos there oc- 
curs an intellectual enlightenment which alone 
would place the individual on a new plane of ex- 
istence — would make him almost a member of 
a new species. To this is added a state of moral 
exaltation, an indescribable feeling of eleva- 
tion, elation, and joyousness, and a quicken- 
ing of the moral sense, which is fully as strik- 
ing and more important than is the enhanced 
intellectual power. With these come what may 
be called a sense of immortality, a conscious- 
ness of eternal life, not a conviction that he 
shall have this, but the consciousness that he 
has it already." This superadded conscious- 
ness of the order and beneficence of the cos- 
mos, which has come in rapt moments of vis- 
ion to many minds, was in Jesus a sovereign 
and habitual consciousness. Purified from 
every element of hysteria, it was in him a sane, 
healthy, unclouded conviction of spiritual 
reality. 

Moreover, this Divine Reality which he be- 
held in abiding vision was not merely an en- | 
compassing presence, or the moral governor 



112 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

of the universe. To Jesus, God was ever the 
Father. Not the depth of God's wisdom or the 
vastness of his power, but his inexhaustible 
solicitude was constantly in Jesus' thought. 
This was not because our Lord was exempt 
from hardship, and enjoyed exceptional favors. 
He was an hungered, weary, and depressed, yet 
he trusted in the Father's care. In those last 
dark hours which tested his soul to the utter- 
most his faith failed not. Even in the treach- 
ery of Judas, the malignity of the priests, 
the ingratitude of the multitude, he saw the 
Father's hand holding the cup to his lips. He 
felt to the full the enormity of the power of 
the world's sin, his own spiritual isolation, the 
adamantine hardness of the nation's heart, the 
frailty of his disciples, the seemingly over- 
whelming defeat which had met his efforts to 
establish the kingdom ; yet in the very hour 
of apparently irretrievable disaster he insti- 
tuted a memorial to celebrate his victory. It 
was as though Napoleon amid the rout of 
Waterloo had requested his staff to rear on 
that field a monument to his triumph over the 
allied nations. In the blackest moment of his 



THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 113 

tragedy Jesus delivered his spirit into the 
Father's hand. His knowledge of God was so 
comprehensive and intimate, so superior to 
that of the greatest of the prophets, that he 
declared : " No one knoweth who the Father 
is, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the 
Son willeth to reveal him." 

Allied to this sense of the divine father- 
hood, and growing out of it, was the realization 
of his own sonship. Jesus conceived himself 
to be living a life of implicit trust and perfect 
obedience. He knew the Father's will and did 
always the things which pleased him. He 
lived the life of a true son. He was conscious 
of a life of perfect spiritual union with God, 
This conviction of sonship gave him his vic- 
tory over Satan in the wilderness, and sus- 
tained him in Gethsemane and on the cross. 

The present generation of Christian think- 
ers is the first since apostolic days which has 
asserted that Jesus is the Son of God on ethi- 
cal in preference to metaphysical grounds. 
It is maintained that by the clearness of his 
knowledge, and the perfectness of his obedi- 
ence, Jesus achieved and demonstrated a spirit- 



114 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

ual union with God which was that of a perfect 
son to the Father. He believed himself to be 
identified with God in will and affection ; and 
his unfailing purpose for his disciples was that 
they should love as God loves, pity as God 
pities, forgive as God forgives, and serve as 
God serves, so that they too should be the sons 
of the Highesto It was this unbroken con- 
formity of purpose and feeling with the nature 
and will of the perfect Father in heaven that 
the disciples beheld in Jesus, and the percep- 
tion confirmed their faith in him and his mis- 
sion. Because of this obedience they believed 
that God had highly exalted him and given 
him a name above every name. We know too 
little about what is deepest in man, and what 
is deepest in the universe, to talk wisely of 
the likeness of substance of the soul of Jesus 
with the substance of the Spirit of God, and 
his unlikeness to the substance of the spirit 
which is in man. We are on much surer 
ground when we shift from the metaphysical 
sonship which our fathers affirmed so dogmat- 
ically to an ethical union, as of father and son, 
subsisting between God and Jesus, a relation- 



THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 115 

ship sustained by abundant evidence. This is 
much safer than to talk in learned ignorance 
of the consubstantiality of Christ's nature with 
that of God. A complete spiritual union indi- 
cates an ontological oneness. We can see the 
former, but cannot prove the latter. Yet that 
God was in Christ is the corner stone of faith 
to-day, as it has been in all the Christian cen- 
turies. We believe that the mind correctly 
reasons when it concludes that the light which 
was in him could have come only from the 
Eternal Fountain. We believe that the true 
deduction to be drawn from such a character 
as his is that he was Light of Light ; the ful- 
ness of God, living in human conditions. 

The approach to Christ's nature and place 
in the spiritual economy through the con- 
templation of his unshadowed fellowship with 
the Father is a surer way than the commoner 
method of arguing his divinity by affirming 
his sinlessness. When one undertakes to prove 
such a negative as sinlessness the task is enor- 
mous. The data are lacking. There are thirty 
silent years. Of the period of his public min- 
istry only a few incidents have come down to 



116 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

us. Christ himself has nowhere unequivocally 
asserted his absolute perfectness in every 
thought and word and deed. His impenitence 
is indeed most anomalous. It is contrary to 
the experience of all the saints. The more 
commanding and intimate the sense of a holy 
God the more keenly does the pure soul real- 
ize its unworthiness. Yet from the lips of the 
one who dwelt most constantly in the ineffable 
glory of the divine presence there escapes no 
cry of repentance, no petition for forgiveness. 
This certainly is unique in the records of holi- 
ness. But our philosophy does not compass all 
the depths of personality. It may be that the 
very majesty of the sense of divine love and tri- 
umph, which was peculiar to Jesus, swallowed 
up regret for any momentary aberration which 
might have occurred in moments of childish 
immaturity, or of physical exhaustion. We 
cannot prove that every deed of his through- 
out his whole earthly career was plumb with 
the straight line of duty, or that no rebellious 
thought was for a single moment cherished. 
It is hard to demonstrate that, in that eternal 
circle life pursues, he did not swerve for a 



THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 117 

single instant from the centre. Our inference 
from his impenitence may simply indicate our 
ignorance of the workings of a mind that re- 
posed perfectly in a knowledge of God's fa- 
therly love. Christ's sinlessness may be a fact, 
but the assertion is an inference from insuffi- 
cient data, and the issue is too momentous to 
rest upon an unstable deduction. We are on 
different ground, however, when we maintain 
that, whenever we get a glimpse into Christ's 
inmost soul, we find an abiding consciousness 
that he is living a life of trust and obedience, 
living as a son should live amid the bewilder- 
ments and temptations of the world. 

To live the life of a son in the Father's 
world, and under the conditions which the 
Father appoints, this is the perfect life, A life 
of complete trust and steady obedience, which 
pours itself out to the uttermost in loving serv- 
ice, cannot be surpassed in the sphere of re- 
ligion. Beyond this there is nothing higher 
or more divine. 

Jesus had a unique sense of mission. Others 
have believed that they had a divine call to a 
specific task. The prophets felt that the bur- 



118 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

den of the Lord was upon them. Paul sought 
to apprehend that for which he had been ap- 
prehended. Bismarck was convinced that he 
was raised up for the unification of Germany. 
But the sense of mission in Jesus was different 
from the call of others. He felt that he stood 
in a relationship to God into which no other 
had been called, and upon him there rested a 
weight which had burdened no other shoul- 
ders. He was the Messiah. He fulfilled in him- 
self the righteousness after which the holy- 
ones in Israel had yearned. Moreover that 
righteousness he could communicate. He could 
save others by an impartation of himself. He 
came to found a kingdom. He was arrested 
upon the charge of claiming the title of king, 
and the accusation he did not disavow. Upon 
this charge he was convicted and sentenced, 
and over the cross to explain and vindicate 
his act, Pilate wrote : " The King of the Jews." 
Some one has well said, " Jesus did not die 
for a metaphor." He was persuaded that his 
mission was to establish a kingdom. But how 
marvelous was his conception of this kingdom ! 
It was to be world-wide in extent. Its monarch, 



THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 119 

unlike other founders of empires, would not be 
the head of a long dynasty of kings, but in his 
own person would reign forever and ever. Not 
only would he be supreme in authority and 
power, but every subject would be conformed 
to the character of the king. Not only would 
he be sovereign over the conduct of men, but 
his personal influence would lead captive every 
thought and bring into obedience every emo- 
tion. So conscious was Jesus of absolute sov- 
ereignty under God that he would brook no 
compromise. If the sacred books contradicted 
his teachings, he abrogated them. He de- 
manded unconditional surrender. "Leave all," 
he said, " and follow me ! " " Whoso loveth 
father or mother more than me is not worthy 
of me ! " To reject him was doom and outer 
darkness. To receive and obey him was to en- 
ter into life eternal. President King has well 
said: "Jesus has such God-consciousness and 
such sense of mission as would topple any other 
brain into insanity, but only keeps him sweet, 
normal, rational. ... In the very act of the 
most stupendous self-assertion, he can still de- 
clare himself to be preeminently the meek and 



120 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

lowly one, and can carry our conviction both 
of his meekness and of his power to give rest 
to all. For my own part, I cannot see that the 
world offers anywhere a comparable phenom- 
enon." 

Ill 

Jesus meets our Religious Needs 

We have approached the person of Christ 
along the road of the evolutionary hypothesis, 
and have affirmed that it is reasonable to be- 
lieve that God, having begun to reveal himself, 
imperfectly in nature and more perfectly in 
man, would complete his work and manifest 
himself in perfected humanity. Jesus is the 
type and the creator of the sons of God. As 
the supreme personality he is God's clearest 
voice to men. He is. the disclosure of what 
man can be, and of what God is in character 
and purpose. We have also studied Christ's 
own consciousness of himself and have ob- 
tained some glimpses of its uniqueness. An- 
other avenue of approach is through our own 
personalities. We validate his mission by re- 
cognizing his ability to satisfy our profound- 
est spiritual needs. 



THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 121 

Man is a thinker. He finds himself in a 
mysterious and often terrible universe. He 
receives cruel blows and drinks deep of the 
cup of bitter disappointment. In passion and 
often in despair he flings his challenge into 
the darkness. What is the meaning of life ? 
What is the nature of that Reality which at one 
moment fondles him and in another breaks 
him down ? What is the goal of life ? What is 
the significance of sorrow ? Whither lead the 
gates of death ? One can endure any severity 
of discipline, if only he has a reasonable ex- 
planation of its significance. These words of 
Chesterton win my hearty assent : " There are 
some people — and I am one of them — who 
think that the most important thing about a 
man is still his view of the universe. We think 
that for a landlady considering a lodger it is 
important to know his income, but still more 
important to know his philosophy. We think 
that for a general about to fight it is import- 
ant to know the enemy's numbers, but still 
more important to know the enemy's philo- 
sophy. We think the question is not whether 
the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but 



122 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

whether in the long run anything else affects 
them." What a man really believes about him- 
self and his destiny, and the nature of the 
forces which work upon him, is of the utmost 
moment. To man, the thinker, Jesus has given 
an interpretation of the nature of God, the 
dignity of humanity, the meaning of pain, 
which carries conviction because it is the most 
rational that can be given, meeting all the pro- 
f oundest necessities of our beings. He puts the 
puzzle of life together so that it makes sense. 
Therefore we believe his insight to be true. 

Man is a living will. He energizes towards 
ends which he conceives to be worthy. Jesus 
meets man, the toiler, with the noblest object 
of endeavor which can possibly be presented 
to the human will. Seek ye first the sovereignty 
of God in your own lives, and in the lives of 
others, and all needful things shall be added 
unto you. No more inclusive, exalted, and 
satisfying goal could be offered than this. It 
awakens all the latent chivalry of the spirit. 

Man has a heart. He feels his dependence up- 
on a Power greater than himself ; he is conscious 
of coming far short of his ideals; he suffers un- 



THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 123 

der a sense of defeat in his spiritual warfare. 
He needs a Comforter, a Redeemer; One whose 
love will not let him go ; One who will forgive 
his sins and help him toward righteousness. 

Henry Ward Beecher has expressed in words 
which will become classic his finding of God 
and the meaning of life through Christ : " I 
know not what the tablets of eternity have 
written down, but I think, when I stand in 
Zion and before God, the brightest thing 
which I shall look back upon will be the blessed 
morning in May when it pleased God to reveal 
to my wandering soul the idea that it was his 
nature to love a man in his sins for the sake 
of helping him out of them ; that he did not 
do it out of compliment to Christ, or to a law, 
or a plan of salvation, but from the fullness 
of his great heart ; that he was not a being made 
mad by sin, but sorry ; that he was not furious 
with wrath towards the sinner, but pitied him. 
. . . And when I found that Jesus had such 
a disposition, and that when his disciples did 
wrong, he drew them closer to him than he 
did before ; and when pride and jealousy and 
rivalry and all vulgar and worldly feelings 



124 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

rankled in their bosoms, he opened his heart 
to them as medicine to heal their infirmities; 
when I found that it was Christ's nature to 
lift men out of weakness to strength, out of 
impurity to goodness, out of everything low 
and debasing to superiority, I felt that I had 
found a God. I shall never forget the feelings 
with which I walked forth that May morning. 
The golden pavements will never feel to my feet 
as then the grass felt to them ; and the sing- 
ing of the birds in the woods — for I roamed 
in the woods — was cacophonous to the sweet 
music of my thoughts ; and there were no forms 
in the universe which seemed to me graceful 
enough to represent the Being, a conception 
of whose character had just dawned upon my 
mind. I felt when I had, with the Psalmist, 
called upon the heavens, the earth, the moun- 
tains, the streams, the floods, the birds, the 
beasts, and universal being, to praise God, 
that I called upon nothing that could praise 
him enough for the revelation of such a nature 
as that in the Lord Jesus Christ." 

Multitudes have accepted Christ as the reve- 
lation of God because in his deeds of service 



THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 125 

and his spirit of grace they behold the God 
after whom their hearts yearn. They make 
the words of Arthur Hallam their own: "I 
like Christianity because it fits into all the 
folds of one's nature." 

Jesus not only interprets God, he brings 
God near. There went out from him an influ- 
ence that made men think of the eternal. In 
him there was a glory that lifted men's thoughts 
to a light that is not upon sea or land. If we 
hold a diamond in the sun, its fire and beauty 
impress us with the worth of the jewel. If in- 
stead of a diamond, we use a crystal prism, 
the wonderful colors revealed cause us to ex- 
claim on the glories of the light rather than 
the beauty of the glass. Moses, Plato, Shake- 
speare amaze us with the depths and brilliancy 
of humanity ; but the flawless purity of Jesus' 
soul carries our thoughts immediately beyond 
itself to the Light which shone through it. He 
surrounded the men who accompanied him with 
the atmosphere of the eternal world. " We be- 
held his glory/' said the Apostle, "the glory of 
the only begotten of the Father, full of grace 
and truth." " We behold the light of the glory 



126 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

of God in the face of Jesus Christ/' writes Paul 
out of his own spiritual experience. The King 
of Glory will come into the life of the indi- 
vidual and into the courses of history, if the 
gates of truth lift up their heads to admit him. 
A mental image held vividly in the mind re- 
leases the latent energies of the will and quick- 
ens the flow of the emotions. Truth firmly 
grasped by the understanding fills the willing 
heart with the spirit of truth. The vision 
splendid sends redeeming power into the soul. 
When the disciples beheld the glory of God in 
the face of Jesus, the spirit and power of God 
came upon them. They were baptized with the 
spirit of the truth which their wondering minds 
had apprehended. New power always is released 
among men by new knowledge, whether that 
knowledge be of electricity, or of God. God 
has been in the hearts of men from the crea- 
tion, but only when the persuasions of his love 
and the mercy of his righteousness were mani- 
fested in Christ did his strength work more 
abundantly, and a new era dawn upon the 
earth. Jesus augmented the power of the im- 
manent God by revealing him, and with the 



THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 127 

new vision there came the added might of the 
Spirit of Truth. Thus Christianity has been 
the most revolutionary force which has made 
for righteousness, peace, and goodness. 

Moreover, the religion which sprang from 
the activity of Jesus will do for the faithful all 
that religion can be expected to do. We often 
lay upon our faith too heavy a burden. We 
seem to think that because we are Christians 
we should be immune from trouble, and should 
be prosperous and happy. We are apt seriously 
to question the reality of our spiritual convic- 
tions when the battle goes against us. Eeligion 
like all the finer influences has its limitations. 
Music will comfort and inspire men, but it will 
not plough their fields. Literature will afford 
pleasure and instruction, but it will not propel 
a locomotive. Religion does not add a cubit 
to our stature, or extra talents to our minds. 
It does not put necessarily a dollar in our 
pockets, nor save us from misfortune. Its office 
is distinct and circumscribed. It interprets the 
meaning of life. It creates ideals and elevates 
standards. It declares and strengthens the 
highest motives. It brings men into those 



128 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

moods and dispositions in which the mental 
faculties work at their best. It gives myste- 
rious strength to the will and dauntless courage 
to the heart. It saves men from the guilt and 
power of sin. It deals directly with the inner 
life and only indirectly with conditions. Jesus 
will do for the soul that comes within the circle 
of his splendor and power all that can be legit- 
imately required of religion. He proves his 
divinity by lifting men into the divine. 

In conclusion, let me beg of you not to 
make him a problem. Do not let the mystery 
of his person become one more vexing ques- 
tion in your spiritual life. He is not another 
problem, but the solution of problems. Con- 
sider him not as a mystery, but as a key to 
the profoundest mysteries. He solves more 
problems than he raises. He is not the puzzle 
of the world, but the Light of the World. 
Whoso follows him shall not walk in darkness, 
but has the light of life. 

" I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
Accepted by the reason, solves for thee 
All questions in the earth and out of it, 
And has so far advanced thee to be wise." 



V 
GOD AND SALVATION 



GOD AND SALVATION 

Has the modern mind in all its searchings 
throughout the universe formed a new concep- 
tion of God? Has it formulated novel argu- 
ments for his existence ? Has any new light 
streamed upon us from nature and the per- 
sonal spirit of man — those two windows by 
which humanity looks out into the infinite ? 



The Nobler Symbols of God 

We may safely affirm that modern science 
has furnished us with nobler symbols of the 
wisdom and majesty of the Creator than was 
known to men of other days. Their snug little 
universe, fashioned six thousand years ago by 
a fiat of the Almighty, has been enlarged by 
measureless diameters. If the Psalmist could 
exclaim, " For the Lord is a great God ! " how 
much more can we, who have received the mar- 



132 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

velous revelations of the telescope and the 
microscope ! Our thought is lost in the im- 
mensities above and below us. No genera- 
tion has been granted such symbols of the 
greatness of God. While the scientists have 
enlarged our vision of the wisdom and the 
vastness of the Creator, New Testament schol- 
ars have called our attention to the preemi- 
nence which Jesus gave to the fatherhood of 
God. This new perception has caused men of 
to-day to replace the dread God of Calvin- 
ism with the God and Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. The modern Christian attempts 
to weave the thought of the divine fatherhood 
into the conception of the infinite and eternal 
reality revealed to us by science. In fusing 
these two visions we find a God whom we can 
both love and adore. 

II 

New Conceptions of God 

The Puritans thought of God as the dread 
sovereign who ruled the affairs of men from 
his awful throne. To-day we are more inclined 
to think of him as an animating and omnipre- 



GOD AND SALVATION 133 

sent Spirit, dwelling in his world as the human 
soul lives in our bodies. In thus emphasizing 
the immanence of God we are returning to the 
convictions of the third and fourth centu- 
ries when the church was pervaded by Greek 
philosophy. From the fifth to the nineteenth 
centuries Christianity has been largely under 
the dominance of Roman methods of thought, 
and has apprehended God as a greater Caesar 
governing the world from above the stars. 
The revived emphasis on the indwelling God 
has modified inevitably many doctrines of 
the church. It has obliterated the distinction 
between the sacred and the profane. To us 
every fragment of life seems like the piece 
of cloth which David held up before the as- 
tonished eyes of Saul at Engedi — a part of 
the king's robe. The pagan religions are not 
considered to be the work of demons, but are 
studied that we may learn the many ways by 
which the Divine Spirit searches for all the 
children of God. 

In this strong new emphasis upon the im- 
manence of the Deity lurks the menace of 
pantheism. Freedom of the will with its ad- 



134 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

venture and risk, its heaven and hell, often 
seems to be submerged in the ordinary courses 
of nature. Sin is frequently shorn of its hor- 
ror, being appraised as "good in the making," 
" truth partially understood," " a mistaken 
search for God," " the absence of light." 

When we seek to learn the prevailing idea 
of the transcendent God, we find a distinct 
line of demarcation separating our intellectual 
leaders. They differ in their starting-points. 
One group of thinkers begins with the sub- 
lime postulate of a perfect God. From him 
nothing can be taken and to him nothing can 
be added. He is perfect as a circle is perfect. 
Full-orbed in joy and power and wisdom, he 
lives in the timeless, spaceless world, holding 
all things present in his thought. What seems 
to us imperfect is made perfect in him. The 
chief end of man is so to purify his soul by 
the divine grace that he may look into the 
undimmed glory of the Eternal, and lift a 
song of everlasting praise for the wonder of 
the Everlasting Love. The perfect God may 
be enjoyed, praised, and loved, but to augment 
his fullness is impossible. 



GOD AND SALVATION 135 

The other group begins with man. They 
are somewhat afraid of metaphysical specula- 
tions, and are more anxious to know what hu' 
manity is, and what it has learned. Generally 
they prefer psychology to philosophy. They 
have a profound reverence for what the spirit in 
man reports. They believe that the affirmations 
of the spirit are that freedom is real; life is a 
venture and its risks are genuine; evil is a rug- 
ged fact ; there is something in this universe 
that is brutal and devilish ; being contrary to 
the will of God, it must be overcome, and the 
battle challenges human heroism and divine 
sacrifice. They declare that truth is to be 
learned by experience. What works well in the 
long run is true. They refuse to let their minds 
wander far from the consciousness and the ex- 
perience of men. They find that God as he has 
been revealed in the process of an evolving 
universe is a battling, patient, conquering God. 
Limited and constrained he appears to be within 
his own creation. Thwarted apparently at a 
million points, he divines fresh ways of ad- 
vance. Like a general assaulting impregnable 
works, he is often baffled by the fortunes of 



136 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

war, but the campaign goes on. Through the 
ages one increasing purpose runs, the plan is 
unfolding, the fight is real, and the garments 
of the conqueror are dyed in blood. 

A multiplying number of men believe that 
the God we know in experience is a militant 
God. Every dedicated soul is conscious that 
the conflict, in which he is enlisted, between 
right and wrong is not a sham fight. Real 
issues both for himself and God depend upon 
his fidelity. The values are of such worth that 
he must sacrifice all things, even life itself, to 
win them. If he is faithless, he does not feel 
merely that he has lost something. He has 
been untrue to God. He has betrayed a Cause, 
He has quenched the Spirit. The Deity is con- 
ceived as carrying on through the ages a task 
of supreme moment, and the activities of men 
either help or hinder him. 

There is a tendency to question whether 
God can predict the movements which man in 
his freedom will make. The directions and 
plans of the campaign are conditioned by the 
fidelity and competence of men. They may 
elect to go before the king and make straight 



GOD AND SALVATION 137 

in the desert a royal highway, or they may make 
the path circuitous and difficult. They may 
smooth the road of redemptive grace, or they 
may compel the Redeemer to toil up Calvary, 
bearing a cross. The methods of God change 
with the volitions of humanity. Professor 
James uses the illustration of a skilled chess- 
player engaged in a game with a novice. The 
expert cannot tell every move which the be- 
ginner will make. His plan is contingent upon 
the play of his opponent, yet he is sure to win. 
His fore-knowledge is of the result rather than 
of each particular action. God knows the end 
from the beginning, but man has a vital part 
in the game. 

Freedom in a true sense makes man a crea- 
tor. He can do more than discover truth and 
rejoice in it. He makes it. He is able to fash- 
ion beauty where there was ugliness. He causes 
light to shine in darkness. He extends the 
domain of justice. He builds up a kingdom 
of righteousness. He adds his own original 
contribution to the temple of God. Thus he 
augments the power of the Almighty. He in- 
creases the available righteousness in the uni- 



138 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

verse. He swells the aggregate of its good- 
ness. Such a militant idea of the import of 
life promotes efficiency and courage — the two 
characteristic virtues of our time. McAndrew, 
in Kipling's famous poem, thinks of the divine 
government under the figure of an immense 
stationary engine, 

" Enormous, certain, slow," — 

each part exactly fitted to its place, everything 
foreseen and provided for, working perpetu- 
ally, yet neither enlarged nor diminished by 
its ceaseless toil. That Calvinistic idea of God 
is repudiated by a growing number of people. 
To them the universe is still in the making. 
The Eternal is really accomplishing something 
in time. His goodness is to be known in his 
achievements. His character is to be seen in 
his activities rather than contemplated in his 
timeless attributes. He is to be called good, 
not because logically all perfections are in 
him, but because his good-will is displayed in 
a struggling world. 

However defective this view may be con- 
sidered as a final philosophy ? it is a tremen- 



GOD AND SALVATION 139 

dous stimulus to activity. Our saints to-day are 
not cloistered contemplatives ; they are soldiers 
adding to the glory and power of God by 
bravery in his wars. They believe that in the 
moral energy of a righteous man the Supreme 
Will experiences an increment of strength. 

In philosophy these two schools are broadly 
distinguished as Absolutists and Pragmatists, 
or as Monists and Pluralists. One contemplates 
God's completeness, the other his struggle. 
The main body of believers belongs to neither 
extreme, but, accepting Kobertson's well- 
known dictum that "truth is made up of 
opposite propositions, and is not found in the 
via media between the two/' they work under 
the inspiration which comes abundantly from 
each group of thinkers, quite content not to 
solve the paradoxes of truth. 

Ill 

New Reasons for Faith 

The materialistic interpretation of nature, 
so ably defended a century ago, is a wan- 
ing philosophy. "The idea," says Sir Oliver 
Lodge, " that the world as we know it arose 



140 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

by chance and fortuitous concourse of atoms 
is one that no science really sustains, though 
such an idea is the superficial outcome of an 
incipient recognition of the uniformity of na- 
ture." The following charming anecdote of 
Kepler shows the instinctive revolt of the 
mind which laughs this hypothesis out of 
court. " Yesterday, when weary with writing, 
and my mind quite dusty with considering 
these atoms, I was called to supper, and a 
salad I had asked for was set before me. It 
seems, then, I said aloud, that if pewter 
dishes, leaves of lettuce, grains of salt, drops 
of vinegar and oil, and slices of egg had been 
floating about in the air from all eternity, it 
might at last happen by chance that there 
would come out a salad. Yes, says my wife, 
but not so nice and well dressed a salad as 
this of mine is ! " 

Matter when closely studied fades away 
into vortices of energy, and the energy every- 
where works in such a purposeful manner 
that one, constitutionally inclined to faith, 
finds it easy to believe that the immanent Rea- 
son and Purpose is not less free, righteous, 



GOD AND SALVATION 141 

and consciously intelligent than the highest 
of his creatures. 

The doctrine of evolution has given us an 
argument for the existence of God which to 
my mind is of convincing weight. Mr. Fiske 
states it in his little volume entitled " Through 
Nature to God." " One of the greatest con- 
tributions ever made to science/' he declares, 
"is Herbert Spencer's profound and luminous 
exposition of life as the continuous adjustment 
of inner to outer relations. ... If you come 
upon a dog lying by the roadside and are in 
doubt whether he is alive or dead, you poke 
him with a stick ; if you get no response, you 
presently conclude that it is a dead dog. . « . 
The growth of a plant is in its ultimate analysis 
a group of motions put forth in adjustment 
to a group of physical conditions in the soil 
and atmosphere. . . . All life upon the globe, 
whether physical or psychical, represents the 
continuous adjustment of inner to outer rela- 
tions. The degree of life is low or high accord- 
ing as the correspondence between the internal 
and the external relations is simple or complex, 
limited or extensive, partial or complete." The 



142 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

lowest form of life reacts only upon the grosser 
impacts which come from its immediate neigh- 
borhood, but a higher form, like a keen-eyed 
vulture, relates itself to the far distant. Em- 
bryology has given us the wonderful fact that 
sight and hearing were slowly differentiated 
from the sense of touch. Light shining upon 
some exceptionally sensitive dermal sac gradu- 
ally developed the organ of vision, and the 
living creature acquired the power to adapt 
itself to distant objects. " The ear was formed 
in response to the outward existence of acoustic 
vibrations, the mother's love came in answer 
to the infant's need, fidelity and honor were 
slowly developed as the nascent social life re- 
quired them. Everywhere the internal adjust- 
ment was brought about so as to harmonize 
with some actually existing external fact. Such 
has been nature's method, such is the deepest 
law of life that science has been able to detect. 
At that critical moment in the history of our 
planet, when love was beginning to play a part 
hitherto unknown, and notions of right and 
wrong were germinating in the nascent human 
soul, we see it vaguely reaching forth to some- 



GOD AND SALVATION 143 

thing akin to itself, not in the realm of fleet- 
ing phenomena, but in the Eternal Presence 
beyond. An internal adjustment of ideas was 
achieved in correspondence with an Unseen 
World. That the ideas were crude and child- 
like is what might be expected. The cardinal 
fact is that the crude childlike mind was grop- 
ing to put itself into relation with an ethical 
world not visible to the senses. Eeligion thus 
ushered upon the scene coeval with the birth 
of humanity has been the largest and most 
ubiquitous fact connected with the existence 
of mankind upon the earth. Now, if the rela- 
tion thus established in the morning twilight 
of man's existence between the human soul 
and a world invisible and immaterial is a rela- 
tion of which only the subjective term is real 
and the objective term is non-existent, then, I 
say, it is something utterly without precedent 
in the whole history of creation. Of all the 
implications of the doctrine of evolution with 
regard to man, I believe the very deepest and 
strongest to be that which asserts the Ever- 
lasting Reality of Religion." In a word, as the 
eye is the response of man to the light, the 



144 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

ear his reaction upon acoustic vibrations, so 
his sense of God and of a supreme moral uni- 
verse is the answer of his soul to an existing 
reality. May we not complete Mr. Fiske's argu- 
ment and believe that as the light has devel- 
oped the perfected eye of the body, so God, 
whose brooding over the human spirit has pro- 
duced the response we call faith, will increas- 
ingly perfect that response until faith becomes 
spiritual intuition, and the sublime prediction 
of the prophets be fulfilled in a redeemed 
humanity that shall see God face to face, and 
know even as also it is known* 

The knowledge that religion is the universal 
response of the human soul to the Unseen 
Presence makes the modern man disinclined 
to consider his faith as resting upon anything 
so unsubstantial as arguments, which if refuted 
leave him spiritually undone. He is more in- 
clined to believe that in the process of liv- 
ing he experiences the Presence, and that his 
reasoning is only an awkward attempt to ex- 
plain to himself what he has learned through 
living. He is confident that his mind works 
in the presence of an Intelligence higher than 



GOD AND SALVATION 145 

his own, and that he has his being environed 
by a Will that everywhere constrains him. The 
truth is that whenever a man lives deeply he 
is conscious of touching a Eeality which is 
wise and beneficent. Usually he feels that he 
is helped and guided. History is replete with 
examples. Washington was so impressed with 
the tokens of Providential direction in our 
struggle for independence that he could not 
refrain from uttering his convictions in his 
inaugural as president. Lincoln was convinced 
that in his dire need he received both strength 
and wisdom. His state papers fairly pulsate 
with this faith. Romanes, who certainly 
sounded all the depths and shallows of atheism, 
speaks his mature conviction when he says: 
" There is a vacuum in the soul which nothing 
can fill but God." The consciousness of the 
highest human beings that they are guided, 
comforted, strengthened by the Unseen Power 
above man is validated by a great multitude 
which no man can number. 

A short time ago in a London book-stall I 
chanced upon a brochure by an American 
theologian — William Newton Clarke — which 



146 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

set forth in a very convincing way the reality 
of religion. The author compared the lives of 
Huxley and Phillips Brooks. The men were 
contemporaries. Each was famous in his chosen 
field of activity. Once they met in London as 
guests of Lowell, Huxley talked, Brooks was 
silent. Huxley challenges our admiration for 
the sturdy integrity of his character, his bril- 
liant talents, his sincere devotion to truth. 
Trained in the laboratory, he applied to religion 
the habits of thought which he had formed by 
years of scientific investigation- The results 
were unfavorable to religion, and he coined 
the word "agnostic" to express his attitude 
toward the supreme affirmations of the Chris- 
tian faith. In all this he was conscientious 
and true to himself. 

In this region of thought and experience of 
which Huxley said he was ignorant, Phillips 
Brooks lived and moved and had his being. 
He was as conscious of the relationship of his 
soul to God as he was of the relationship of 
his body to the earth. " Religion," he affirmed, 
" comes directly from the soul of God laid 
immediately upon and pressing itself into the 

1 



GOD AND SALVATION 147 

soul of every one of his children." Again he 
utters his own experience: "Less and less, I 
think, grows the consciousness of seeking God. 
Greater and greater grows the certainty that 
he is seeking us and giving himself to us to 
the completest measure of our present capac- 
ity. . . . There is such a thing as putting our- 
selves in the way of God's overflowing love 
and letting it break upon us till the response 
of love comes, not by struggle, not even by de- 
liberation, but by necessity, as the echo comes 
when the sound strikes the rock." In the 
sweet and precious sense of the encompassing 
and inflowing love of God the famous preacher 
lived. He proclaimed with ever increasing 
power the reality of an abundant, free, glo- 
rious life of the loving soul in God. He spoke 
not as the scribes, but with authority. Upon 
these high certainties his spirit fed. He tested 
them by the strain of life. The strength com- 
ing to him from the Unseen made his soul 
virile and radiant, a glowing pillar of light 
and hope. Such spiritual strength, sanity, and 
beauty are not produced by hallucinations. It 
is inconceivable that such a robust and sover- 



148 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

eign spiritual life should be lived in a vacuum. 
If atheism is true, then Brooks, and the in- 
numerable multitude of the most luminous and 
commanding characters of history, grew up, 
were vitalized, and became mighty in a realm 
of nothingness. If atheism is true, the best 
lives are nourished in a void. If God cannot 
be known, then the glorious company of the 
saints were not merely deluded, they could not 
have lived. "If Brooks was right, Huxley 
suffered limitations that robbed him of his 
birthright. If Huxley was right, Brooks, by 
all sound reason, was impossible. There is no 
need of affirming atheism and materialism out 
and out, in order to render Brooks and his 
life impossible. Such agnosticism as Huxley's 
will answer just as well. If one cannot legiti- 
mately affirm anything concerning the reality 
of God, the soul, and the eternal life, then the 
satisfaction, enthusiasm, exaltation of Brooks 
in view of them was quite unjustified, and 
can never be worthily entertained by a right- 
thinking man. If all men thought as Huxley 
thought, no man could ever live as Brooks 
lived." 



GOD AND SALVATION 149 

One cannot refrain from asking, if this 
world of religious experience in which the 
great preacher lived was real, why was it closed 
to Huxley? The answer is to be found in the 
method each pursued. Brooks was a lover of 
man and his works. While not blind to the 
beauties of nature, he preferred cathedrals to 
mountains. His interest was in man and his 
experiences, rather than in nature and its 
methods. The prolonged study he gave to man, 
and human needs and satisfactions, made God 
and the abundant life which the soul may live 
in him very real. He was confident that the 
higher faculties of our nature are correlated 
with a Being who gives grace and strength. 
He was certain that his own experience, and 
the experiences of the faithful in all genera- 
tions, verified the essential truths of religion. 

Huxley, on the other hand, was chiefly in- 
terested in the study of nature and its methods. 
"When he turned his attention to religion he 
endeavored to explain the world of personal 
relationships by the natural laws with which 
he was familiar. He made the mistake of 
applying the laws and methods of the physical 



150 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

laboratory to the interpretation of man and 
his experiences. This inevitably led to intel- 
lectual confusion. Fluids and gases are not 
the measure of all things. There are forces 
which do not dwell in matter. There are truths 
which cannot be known by induction from 
material facts. In Huxley's system of thought 
there was no rational explanation for Phillips 
Brooks, while in the philosophy of Brooks 
there was room for Huxley and all his dis- 
coveries. Yet the great scientist lived too 
deeply not to touch the Everlasting Reality 
and to attain the strength, if not the joy of 
faith. He was profoundly impressed with the 
balanced justice of nature, and his confidence 
in the goodness of the Unknown is beautifully 
expressed in the words written by his wife, 
which he requested to have engraved upon his 
tombstone : — 

"Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep; 
For still He giveth His beloved sleep, 
And if an endless sleep He wills, so best." 

Such a comparison as we have made deepens 
the conviction that the chief differences be- 
tween good men lie quite largely, not in vital 



GOD AND SALVATION 151 

experiences, but in their methods of interpre- 
tation and in the language they employ. 

IV 

New Light upon the Nature of Sin 

Sin and the sinner we have always with us, 
but we view them in quite a different light 
from that in which our fathers beheld them. 
You are familiar with the ancient solution of 
man's condition. 

"In Adam's fall 
We sinned all." 

Because of the first man's transgression the 
poison of sin is in the blood of all his descend- 
ants. We all partake of his condemnation. 
An evolutionist naturally finds the cause of 
the world's evil elsewhere than in the sin of 
Adam. Man, he believes, is emerging from the 
brute. He is cumbered with a heavy animal 
inheritance, retaining in his nature much of 
the swine and the tiger. He is " stuccoed o'er 
with quadrupeds," and these bestial passions 
sweep him into much sin. 

Moreover, being imperfect, his vision is not 
clear, nor his wisdom mature, therefore his 



152 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

moral judgments are often wrong and disas- 
trous. 

But with the fathers we recognize that sin- 
fulness is more than the result of animality 
and of ignorance. There is in it an element 
of perversity. Men deliberately centre their 
lives upon self rather than upon God. They 
put their wills in opposition to his purposes, 
and close their hearts to the diviner influences. 
Sin's tragedy consists in the fact that men 
practically renounce God's sovereignty over 
their lives, and seek, instead of his will, the 
gratification of their own desires. Sin is self- 
ishness, and out of selfishness flows the tears 
and anguish of the world. 

In another respect are we antipodal to our 
fathers. They considered sin to be natural to 
a depraved humanity. We conceive it to be 
unnatural. They said, " To err is human." We 
affirm that to err is the denial of humanity. 
They declared that the nature of man is evil. 
We quote Aristotle's saying that the nature 
of a thing is what it is at its best. We assert 
that man in his true estate is a child of God ; 
that when he sins he wanders away from his 



GOD AND SALVATION 153 

Father's house to dwell among the swine. But 
he is still a son and the appeal is to be made 
to his sonship. Sin is the repudiation of his 
real nature, a severing of his essential relation- 
ships. Being thus a rejection of God's love 
and a degradation of one's self, sin appears 
more awful than it seems when considered as 
the inevitable action of a demonized person. 

Gladstone once said that the chief religious 
characteristic of our day is " the waning con- 
sciousness of sin." Certainly that profound 
sense of personal guilt of which we read in the 
lives of the ancient saints is not a feature of 
our modern religious life. We are less intro- 
spective and less critical of our moods. Yet 
probably there never has been a time in his- 
tory when so many people felt the burden of 
the evil of the world. In our day there is a 
strong, deep, ever-increasing social conscious- 
ness. The realization of the evil condition of 
men, and of our personal obligation to do a 
man's share in bettering the lives of the less 
fortunate, has taken the place of that sense 
of individual unworthiness before God to 
which our fathers bore witness. We are less 



154 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

alive than they to sin against God ; we are 
more keenly aware of the crimes against hu- 
manity. The future generation which perceives 
that whatsoever is done to humanity is done 
to God will comprehend the more perfect 
truth of which the thought of the fathers and 
our own apprehensions are but segments. 



New Conceptions of the Way of Salvation 

In chemistry a slight change in the formula 
produces vastly different results. A trifling 
modification of proportion in the ingredients 
affects the product. No one would affirm that 
in the spiritual world an entirely new truth 
had been discovered, or a unique power re- 
leased, analogous to the finding of radium 
among the physical forces. Yet there has been 
so marked a change of emphasis, and such a 
readjustment of values, that both the philoso- 
phy and the experience of religion have been 
altered. 

The former conception of salvation has been 
revised. The generation preceding ours com- 
monly thought of salvation as future glorifi- 



GOD AND SALVATION 155 

cation. The saved were those who were sure 
of going to heaven. To-day salvation is con- 
sidered rather as a present experience. The 
saved are those who were once " consciously 
wrong, inferior and unhappy, but are now con- 
sciously right, superior and happy" through 
the influence of religion. We think of salva- 
tion in terms of character, not in terms of 
condition. It is the adequate and symmetrical 
development of one's nature. Even our ideals 
of character have been modified, and I think 
lowered. Edwards, like the spiritual leaders 
of all the Christian centuries, aspired after an 
habitual and almost superhuman exaltation of 
soul, that he might live consciously in the pre- 
sence of God, and be one with him in desire 
and purpose. The modern man is quite satis- 
fied to be decent and respectable. He desires 
poise and balance rather than spiritual eleva- 
tion. 

Faith is as great a word with us as with the 
fathers, but we use it in a somewhat different 
sense. We are seriously trying to empty the 
word of much of the content which it has held 
for fifteen centuries, and to employ it in its 



156 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

primitive and practical significance. Many gen- 
erations of men have considered faith as closely 
akin to credulity. It has meant accepting with- 
out reservation a creed or a plan of salvation. 
But that notion is rapidly changing. Faith 
has to-day essentially the same significance in 
religion as in business. It is insight plus valor. 
You perceive certain conditions of the market 
and you have the courage to take the risk. 
There is a spiritual as well as a business judg- 
ment. You are confronted by ideals which you 
perceive to be of superlative worth and beauty. 
You recognize certain elemental laws which 
should govern the actions of men. You can- 
not demonstrate with mathematical precision 
the validity of these truths and ideals, but your 
conviction of their worth is such that you give 
them full loyalty. Life tests the accuracy of 
your insight and faith becomes certitude. 

But what does faith perceive and appropri- 
ate ? Paul has gloriously stated faith's object 
in the triumphant sentence: "For the law of 
the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free 
from the law of sin and death." In the ma- 
terial world when a force is discovered working 



GOD AND SALVATION 157 

in an orderly and continuous manner its opera- 
tion is called a law. We speak of the law of 
gravitation because we discern a force acting 
in a predictable way. Now in nature there is 
a power that works unceasingly towards dis- 
integration. This power of death is met and 
overcome by another power operating in the 
interests of life. Hence the earth continually 
renews its beauty and f ruitf ulness through the 
law of the spirit of life in the physical world. 
In us there is a law working toward selfishness 
and animality. It leads to sin and death. Just 
as clearly do we recognize an upbuilding power 
strengthening us in righteousness, goodness, 
and truth. Matthew Arnold calls it "a Power, 
not ourselves, that makes for righteousness"; 
others denominate it " the spirit of the Living 
God" ; Paul designates it as the "law of the 
spirit of life in Christ Jesus." All those ener- 
gies which were manifested so wonderfully in 
Christ are the redeeming forces in the world 
of the spirit. 

Faith is the insight which perceives and 
the valor which appropriates this Spirit of 
Life, whose persuasions and power we feel in 



158 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

our own souls, whose glory shone in the face 
of Jesus Christ, and whose ongoings have 
marked the progress of the race. It is the ven- 
ture which the soul makes in obedience to its 
intuitions. 

This vital conception of faith causes those 
who hold it to affirm that church membership 
should be conditioned only upon fidelity to the 
spiritual realities manifested in Christ. 

We have a longer look backward upon this 
law of the spirit of life than was given to the 
fathers. When science first unveiled to us the 
illimitable past, we were dismayed before the 
vision of the fearful waste and carnage by 
which our present civilization was achieved. 
The world of nature seemed antipodal in every 
respect to the love revealed upon Calvary. But 
profounder research has discovered that love 
and sacrifice have cosmic roots. Prom the be- 
ginning the law of the struggle for life has 
been paralleled by the kindlier law of the 
struggle for the life of others. Animal life has 
been perpetuated because the strong have de- 
fended and cared for the weak. Through the 
law of love mankind exists. The mother goes 



GOD AND SALVATION 159 

down to death for the child; the helpless in- 
fant lives because the basic law of the family 
is gentleness, patience, and sacrifice. Families 
have become tribes, and the tribes nations, 
through the law of the family — mutual consid- 
eration and helpfulness — extending in ever 
widening circles. Courtesy, integrity, cooper- 
ation are indispensable in a highly organized 
social structure. The love that shone so glo- 
riously on Calvary is now seen to be woven into 
all life as a law of existence, and to be having 
increasing influence as humanity approaches 
the divine likeness. In this new apprehension 
of love as the architectonic law supporting all 
life, we have an ampler illustration than was 
given to men of other days of that spirit of 
Christ by whom all things were created and in 
whom all things consist. 

We have a broader as well as a more length- 
ened vision of the grace of God. It is not 
many generations back since men believed in 
a limited salvation. Less than a hundred years 
ago the whole pagan world was considered lost, 
and their religions to be the snare of the Evil 
One. Our generation for the most part believes 



160 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

that God is the Father of all mankind, and that 
his mercies are as wide as humanity. We as- 
sert with Paul that God has not left himself 
without a witness in every heart, and we con- 
fess that Mahomet, Gautama, Confucius were 
true, if partial, interpreters of the Eternal, and 
that their religions represent genuine strivings 
after God. What to our fathers 

" seemed an idol hymn, now breathes of Thee, 
Tuned by faith's ear to some celestial melody." 

This broader conception of the divine indwell- 
ing fills us with a large hope for the salvation 
of the world lying beyond the borders of Christ- 
endom. The great Catholic missionary Xavier, 
sailing by some islands where he could not 
land, dipped a brush in holy water and waving 
it in the sign of the cross towards them, claimed 
the inhabitants for the church. We would 
claim them for God because they are his child- 
ren and in them his spirit strives. 

The doctrine of the Atonement, which has 
been the central teaching of the church from 
the very beginning, has for us some new mean- 
ings. I will mention three insights into its sig- 
nificance characteristic of modern thought. 



GOD AND SALVATION 161 

The first was clearly formulated in this coun- 
try by Horace Bushnell, and was powerfully 
proclaimed by Henry Ward Beecher and Phil- 
lips Brooks. It is the nature of God, they as- 
serted, to love men in their sins for the pur- 
pose of helping them out of their evil condi- 
tion. Love cannot fully disclose itself except 
by suffering even unto the uttermost. Christ 
by his death revealed that divine compassion 
which loved us from the foundation of the 
world, and which will not let us go, although 
it pays the extreme cost. Jesus brought that 
compassionate love so effectively into history 
as to win multitudes to reconciliation with God. 
Secondly, we think of the Atonement as an 
eternal process. The three hours, suffering on 
Calvary, was more than an event ; it was the 
declaration of the holy love of the atoning 
God which has been meeting sin from the be- 
ginning, is even now bearing its weight, and 
will contend with it until the triumphant end. 
As the eruption of a volcano reveals earth's 
central fires, so Calvary manifests a sacrificial 
love which from the beginning has been, is, 
and will be forever, winning men into oneness 



162 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

with God. The third insight has to do with 
our part in wiping out the stain and overcom- 
ing the effects of sin. We have often heard 
the older ministers declare that " Jesus paid 
it all," and that our part was to accept a com- 
pleted work. Something was indeed done upon 
the cross which needs not to be repeated. But 
sin is still in the world, its stain is yet on men's 
souls, its effects are piling up ever accumulat- 
ing iniquities. When one repents of his sin, 
and sets himself resolutely to repair the dam- 
age he has done, or to add to the good of the 
world, he has a sweet and consoling conscious- 
ness that he is working with God, that he is 
bearing his share of the common burden of 
humanity's sin, and that his own soul is being 
knit by closer ties to an atoning Redeemer. 
This consciousness of helping the Eternal Son 
of God bear his cross inspired those noble 
words of the apostle : " I fill up on my part 
that which is lacking of the afflictions of 
Christ." 

In our modern thought the Atonement is 
not solely a transaction upon Calvary, making 
possible the divine forgiveness of sins. It is 



GOD AND SALVATION 163 

rather a world process of recovering man to 
his normal life with God, and of conquering 
the moral evil of the world by the loyalty of 
believers making effectual the sacrificial love 
of the Father manifested in Christ. 

VI 

The New Vision of a Social Gospel 

Very significant is the change of emphasis 
from individual salvation to the establishment 
of the kingdom of God. The apostolic church 
was largely indifferent to the political and 
economic conditions of the time. They were 
looking for the immediate appearance of the 
Lord. After the apostles and the apostolic men 
fell on sleep and until our own day the domi- 
nant thought has been that out of a ruined 
world the church was to rescue every soul 
which could be saved. The prevailing cry has 
been the one which went up from the stricken 
field of Waterloo: "All is lost, save himself 
who can ! " This is alien to the modern pulpit. 
We teach that the individual cannot save him- 
self alone. One finds his life by losing it in 
self-forgetful service in the interests of the 



164 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

kingdom. The modern Christian is taught to 
turn his eyes away from himself and to catch 
the glorious vision of a redeemed world. His 
supreme duty is to bring the spirit of Christ 
into his business and social relations. He must 
seek to establish truth, justice, and righteous- 
ness within the sphere of his power. 

The Reverend F. B. Meyer, who in his early 
ministry was an individualist, in describing the 
change in his own aims and methods, has aptly 
chronicled the new ideals and efforts. " I used 
to live," he said, " in a little hut on the road 
between Jerusalem and Jericho so that I might 
help travelers who had been beset by thieves. 
But lately I have moved into Jerusalem itself, 
and am hammering away at Caiaphas and 
Pilate to send a company of soldiers to root 
out the whole nest of robbers !" 



VI 
IMMORTALITY 



VI 

IMMOKTAUTY 

If men were merely physical beings they 
would never dream of immortality; if they 
were wholly spiritual they would probably 
never doubt it. Living on the borderland, hav- 
ing bodies formed of the dust and spirits which 
feel a kinship with something above the earth, 
they alternate between faith and doubt. The 
notion of an endless life grows out of our sense 
of the Infinite. We are like men upon a small 
island ; we walk but a short distance in any di- 
rection before we confront an unmeasured and 
unsounded mystery. The infinite is all about 
us. If we study the flower in the crannied 
wall, our thoughts are soon lost in the incom- 
prehensible. When the dust at our feet is 
analyzed it leads to the conception of vortices 
of force; and if we probe for the secret of 
force, we immediately stand in the presence of 
the Eternal Energy. Every thoughtful man's 
experience is that of the Hebrew sage : "I said, 



168 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

I will water my best garden ; and will water 
abundantly my garden bed ; and lo, my brook 
became a river, and my river became a sea." 
This consciousness of the infinite, environing 
life upon every side, awakens the sense of the 
infinite within himself. Deep calls to deep. 
He feels like 

" A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand 
Left on the shore; that hears all night 
The plunging seas draw backward from the land 
Their moon-led waters white." 

The thunder of the Eternal, which he hears in 
his silent and meditative moments, arouses and 
confirms an instinctive hope that he is not a 
creature of a moment, but will live a conscious 
life in that Eternal out of which he came and 
to which he returns. 

Like all future events life after death is in- 
capable of proof. At its best it is a reasonable 
anticipation, a faith which grows clearer and 
stronger in the tests of research and experience. 
Has modern investigation brought new oil to 
feed the flames of our hope, or has its deeper 
minings released noxious gases of negation to 
extinguish the fires upon the altar ? 



IMMORTALITY 169 

I 

The Atmosphere of Faith 

Before presenting any positive arguments 
for immortality it may be well to indicate an 
atmosphere created by the newer knowledge 
in which faith may live. I think we may affirm 
without hesitation that nothing has been dis- 
covered by modern science, which makes belief 
in a life after death irrational. The once for- 
midable atheistic dogma that there could be no 
consciousness without brain has become out- 
worn. It has been demonstrated that the mo- 
lecular action of the brain cannot be translated 
into terms of consciousness. You have not ex- 
plained thought by tracing the brain paths of 
the molecules any more than you have ade- 
quately explained music by describing the 
scraping of horsehair on the intestines of cats. 
"Nothing," says Mr. Fiske, "could be more 
grossly unscientific than the famous remark of 
Cabanis, that the brain secretes thought as the 
liver secretes bile. It is not even correct to say 
that thought goes on in the brain. What goes 
on in the brain is an amazingly complex series of 
molecular movements, with which thought and 



170 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

feeling are in some way related, not as effects 
or causes, but as concomitants. . . . The ma- 
terialistic assumption that there is no such state 
of things, and that the life of the soul accord- 
ingly ends with the life of the body, is per- 
haps the most baseless assumption that is 
known to the history of philosophy." Professor 
William James speaks in a similar strain: 
"When the physiologist who thinks that his 
science cuts off all hope of immortality pro- 
nounces the phrase, l Thought is a function of 
the brain/ he thinks of the matter just as he 
thinks when he says, 6 Steam is a function of 
the tea-kettle.' . . . But in the world of phy- 
sical nature productive function of this sort 
is not the only kind of function with which 
we are familiar. We have also releasing or 
permissive function ; and we have transmissive 
function." As when the trigger of the cross- 
bow releases the arrow, or a lens transmits the 
light. "When," continues Professor James, 
"we think of thought as a function of the 
brain, we are not required to think of produc- 
tive function only; we are entitled also to con- 
sider permissive or transmissive function." 



IMMORTALITY 171 

It may be that the brain permits a spiritual 
energy within us to find expression, even as an 
organ allows one's emotions to utter them- 
selves. Injure the organ and the musician is 
hampered in his self-disclosure. Or the brain 
may transmit thought, as glass transmits light. 
The condition of the glass determines the 
light which shines through. Yet the glass does 
not create the light. Evidently what we learn 
in the laboratory neither proves nor disproves 
immortality. The question transcends its sphere 
and belongs to one of moral probability. 

A real impediment to faith in immortal- 
ity is our inability to conceive it. "We cannot 
form a mental image of an existence separated 
from the body. Our difficulty is often one of 
the imagination. We are unable to make ap- 
pear real what lies beyond experience. The 
imagination is unable to visualize a life inde- 
pendent of time and sense. Paul met this 
limitation by using the illustration of a seed. 
Its corruptible body decays, but its vital germ 
reappears in another form. In wireless tele- 
graphy modern knowledge has furnished us 
with a still more forcible analogy. The elec- 



172 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

trical fluid in the sender's instrument receives 
impressions and a character, then leaving its 
place of bondage and character forming, it 
is committed to an ether, which eye hath not 
seen, nor the heart conceived ; ultimately it 
finds an appropriate body where it can display 
its character, and the memories which it has 
never lost. In this flying message we have 
thought, experience, character, maintaining 
individuality without a body that is either 
tangible or visible. Surely it is not incredible 
that the spirit of man, loosed from its prison- 
house and flying along the spiritual courses of 
the world, may find a medium through which 
it can body forth its life. 

It is perhaps the testimony of our senses 
which presents the most formidable obstacle 
to our faith in immortality. We see men die 
and the process of dissolution begin. Every 
evidence of our senses indicates that death 
ends all. But just here the advance of know- 
ledge comes to our aid. Accumulated experi- 
ence has taught us to trust the conclusions of 
reason as against the witness of the senses. 
Our sight informs us that the earth is flat ; 



IMMORTALITY 173 

our reason has forced us to believe that it is 
round. The sun appears to move about the 
stable earth ; reason affirms that the earth re- 
volves about the sun. Sense-perception bears 
indisputable testimony to the solidity of a 
piece of wood. It looks and feels like an inert 
mass of substantial matter. But in the face 
of the concurrent testimony of both sight and 
touch, we credit the affirmation of reason that 
the apparently motionless wood is composed 
of centres of force, each separate from the 
others, and related much as the planets are in 
the solar system. If modern science has taught 
us anything, it is that the senses are not infal- 
lible witnesses, and that it is admissible to trust 
the deductions of the reason even against their 
testimony. We are justified, therefore, in taking 
the question of the continuity of life out of the 
court of the senses, and of appealing to the 
higher tribunal of the reason. We may even 
go further, and declare that the senses, credible 
within a limited sphere, are usually mistaken 
in the higher issues. Things are not what they 
seem. Not infrequently the fact is the reverse 
of the appearance. 



174 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

Having prepared for an argument by re- 
moving the objection raised by the senses, and 
by showing that materialism has failed to 
prove that consciousness is the product of brain 
activity, and having lessened the difficulty of 
the imagination by presenting the analogy 
of wireless telegraphy, we come to the more 
positive part of the discussion, and ask what 
effect the evolutionary hypothesis has had upon 
faith in immortality. I think it has greatly 
strengthened that faith. 

II 

Indications of Immortality furnished by Evolution 

Evolution gives us a long look back into the 
past. It unveils the primal fire mist, it reveals 
a cooling earth, the coming of vegetable and 
animal life. Millions of years were consumed in 
this upward movement of creation. The ages 
toiled, aeon succeeded aeon before the world 
was fitted to be the habitation of man. With 
the advent of humanity physical evolution 
ceased. All subsequent progress has been 
human progress. Natural selection, having 
framed man's body, began to work upon his 



IMMORTALITY 175 

brain. Man's growth has not been in increased 
bodily stature, but in mental and spiritual 
power. At first a feeble creature, he has fought 
a steady and increasingly victorious battle 
against nature and against his own brute ten- 
dencies. At infinite cost he has erected his 
civilization. With pain inconceivable he has 
thought out and established his institutions. 
Yet he has paid the price willingly, for he 
has been sustained by a deep conviction that 
his efforts served a Power not himself. He 
has not worked merely for his own comfort ; 
he has fought in the name of God. He has 
labored under the compulsion of a heavenly 
vision of personal and racial victory over sin 
and death. He has felt that he was fighting no 
sham battle. Immense issues hung upon his 
fidelity, and his devotion augmented the glory 
of God. 

A man, standing in the twentieth century, 
and gazing back over the long, toilsome, costly 
process from the fire-mist up to primitive man, 
and from primeval man to our present highly 
organized society, cannot readily believe that 
he is contemplating the haphazard whirl of 



176 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

unintelligent forces. It has not been a simple 
game of chance ; the dice have been loaded. 
There has been an increasing purpose running 
through the ages, working towards man and 
the fulfillment of his destiny. Surely the un- 
folding purpose prophesies an outcome worthy 
of the process. If materialism is right, and 
humanity returns to the dust from whence it 
came, and the earth is at last only a burned- 
out cinder ; if the struggle of the ages, the 
prayers of the holy, the sacrifice of martyrs, the 
trust of the faithful, the aspirations of saintly 
minds, the devotion of the brave, ultimate in 
dust and ashes, then we are put to " perma- 
nent intellectual confusion." The ages have 
toiled and brought forth nothing. The Eternal 
has blown a soap bubble, and painted it with 
wondrous colors at awful cost of agony to the 
iridescent figures, and then allowed it to burst ! 
The wisdom, power, and sacrificial love, re- 
vealed in the long and orderly upward move- 
ment, create the expectation that the culmina- 
tion will be worth the cost. 

It may well be replied that this argument 
simply indicates that the world process must 



IMMORTALITY 177 

have a meaning, and that that meaning may be 
in God himself, apart from humanity, for his 
glory and not for our gain. But certainly it is 
impossible for us to conceive of any outcome 
in which humanity does not share, or to believe 
the Eternal to be a Moloch, who satisfies him- 
self and consumes his laborers. 

The evolutionary hypothesis, however, en- 
ables us to make the application more per- 
sonal. There was a time when the highest form 
of life upon the planet was a jelly-like mass, 
floating about in the water. It was without 
power of locomotion, sightless, senseless, ca- 
pable only of absorbing such food particles as 
the primeval ocean drifted against it. What 
Intelligence coming to this planet from another 
sphere would have ventured the prophecy that 
an object so lowly could give birth 

" To the glory that was Greece 
And the grandeur that was Kome " ? 

Yet the push of nature was behind it. As the 
centuries and millenniums passed, life acquired 
the power of locomotion ; it developed the 
faculty of vision ; it accumulated experiences, 
becoming conscious and then self-conscious ; 



178 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

it attained the noble faculty of reason ; it dis- 
tinguished sensations, and choosing between 
them, became aware of freedom and of respon- 
sibility to select the best ; it formed glorious 
ideals of a nobler self ; then it began to crave 
to be fashioned in the likeness of the Perfect 
Righteousness, and to commune with the In- 
finite Goodness ; and to crown all these mar- 
velous achievements it dreamed of immortal- 
ity ! In this steady acquisition of riches there 
is a foreshadowing of the future. If life in 
its long upward journey has acquired locomo- 
tion, sense-perception, reason, consciousness, 
self-determination, a feeling of moral respon- 
sibility, it is not incredible that when it thirsts 
for immortality the craving is a prophecy that 
the desire will be satisfied. Having achieved 
so much, the dream of continued existence is 
surely rational. Life has already made the 
journey from the mollusk to the mind of Plato 
and the heart of Paul. The past at least is secure. 
Having gathered such amazing spoils, it is not 
unreasonable to believe that this instinctive 
reaching-out for greater things in the future 
is indicative of a still further advance. If life 



IMMORTALITY 179 

has become personal in man, it is not strange 
if his anticipation of a life everlasting suggests 
that he has secreted the power of perpetuating 
that self through the night of death. 

Evolution furnishes another argument for 
faith. Man stands confessedly at the head of 
the animal kingdom. He is the culmination of 
an age-long process of development. Yet it is 
just as evident that he has hardly begun his 
moral growth. Sovereign in the animal world, 
he is a child in the spiritual. Standing upon, 
the mountain peak of nature, he stretches out 
his hands towards a higher world, whose breath 
he feels upon his brow. Below him is the 
sphere of instinct, force, necessity, appetite, 
impulse. Above and within him he perceives 
a diviner sphere of Reason, Righteousness, 
Love, Liberty, Aspiration. In this supernatu- 
ral order, whose laws are so contradictory to 
the physical, be is but a child. Greatest in the 
range of the material, he is the least in the 
kingdom of the spiritual. It is surely not in- 
credible that if the ages have put him on the 
summit of the natural, he shall yet climb the 
heights of the spiritual. If the physical evolu- 



180 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

tion has been completed, why should not the 
spiritual be also perfected ? 

Ill 

Arguments drawn from the Nature of Man 

A more comprehensive study of the nature 
of man has led to some valuable results, and 
to a restatement of our reasons for faith in a 
future life. Investigation, however, has as yet 
brought no scientific proof. The Society of 
Psychical Research, composed of some of the 
ablest scientists in England and America, has 
been seeking to ascertain whether the alleged 
communications from the departed are actual 
disclosures of living personalities beyond the 
veil, or are to be accounted for in other ways. 
The society has expended twenty-five years in 
patient pioneer work. It has learned much of 
the telepathic power of the mind, and some- 
thing of that part of our being which lies 
below consciousness, and which is frequently 
called the subliminal self. Up to the present 
time no indisputable proof of survival has 
been produced, yet the evidence accumulated 
encourages hope that this field will not prove 



IMMORTALITY 181 

barren. To use the figure with which Sir 
Oliver Lodge is credited, " As we tunnel the 
mountain, we seem to hear the picks of those 
who are digging from the other side." Pro- 
fessor James asserts, " I myself feel as if an 
external will to communicate were probably 
there . . . but if asked whether the will to 
communicate be Hodgson's or some mere 
spirit counterpart of Hodgson, I remain un- 
certain and await more facts, facts which may 
not point clearly to a conclusion for fifty or a 
hundred years." 

We do not rest our hope of survival so heav- 
ily as did our fathers on the bodily resurrection 
of Jesus. Evidence which was sufficient to per- 
suade men in apostolic times must lose some- 
thing of its convincing power as it recedes into 
the distance. We have learned that love and 
desire may be satisfied with evidence which 
is not indisputable to those farther removed. 
Most Christians to-day believe in the resur- 
rection of Jesus because they believe first in 
immortality. If man, they reason, is immortal, 
then truly the supreme man is not sleeping 
under the Syrian stars. Less often than form- 



182 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

erly does one hear arguments for the future 
life which are based upon the proofs of the 
empty tomb outside the walls of Jerusalem. 

That the modern man's statement of his 
faith is not entirely a repetition of ancient 
arguments is seen in the use of a new term 
which he has introduced. Seldom does he 
speak of the immortality of the soul. Soul is 
an abstract word. It lacks definite content. 
Personality is preferable, as being more con- 
crete and definable. We know persons, but 
souls are hidden. We call a man a person be- 
cause he has self -consciousness ; he preserves 
his identity through all his earthly exist- 
ence, even though every particle of his body 
changes ; he can in a large measure dominate 
his environment, and win victories over tem- 
poral conditions; and more than all he has 
virtue or moral value. Self-consciousness, 
identity, self-determining activity, worth, these 
are the elemental factors of personality. Man 
is not a delicately constructed monument of 
dust. He has "a central core of spiritual life." 
The universe does not work through him as 
natural impulse, but is grasped and appropri- 



IMMORTALITY 183 

ated into his personal being. He thinks of 
himself as an original source of energy, and 
as physical force cannot be destroyed, he does 
not consider himself to be credulous in hoping 
that the original kind of force which he knows 
as his personality shall endure. 

But man realizes that he is only an incom- 
plete person. He has not yet attained to the 
fullness of his stature. His powers are not yet 
developed. He is only partially free. There is 
a greater possible self enfolded in the actual 
self. "Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be." 
He feels the pressure of the ideal. He is 

11 Galled with his confines, and troubled yet more with his 

vastness. 
Born too great for his ends, never at peace with his goal." 

The best men are not supremely interested in 
the mere continuity of this present imperfect 
self. They yearn for a completion of being. 
They demand a conception of life as a whole, 
which shall make this present existence signi- 
ficant and well worth while. They feel that 
the chief object to be desired is not contin- 
uity of life, but a certain quality of life. The 
saints have hungered not for length of days, 



184 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

they have passionately craved what the New 
Testament calls " eternal life," "life indeed," 
the "abundant life." The One who attained to 
this fullness of life most completely assumed 
immortality as a necessary presupposition. He 
apparently took it for granted, as an architect 
presupposes space in projecting a cathedral. 
One is surer of his postulates than of the con- 
clusions of his reason. To Jesus this way of 
living was of such infinite value, the soul liv- 
ing the abundant life was so rooted in God, 
and saturated with his presence, it was so fully 
a partaker of the divine nature, that to think of 
it as the plaything of time and accident was 
impossible. The persons thus nourished upon 
eternal realities must live a life eternal in its 
quality. 

Our Lord, whose spirit derived its vitality 
from no temporal sources, assumed continued 
superiority over physical dissolution. He be- 
lieved that God's children would all grow up. 
What in him, the perfect personality, was an 
unargued conviction, in imperfect men is a 
premonition. Knowing our lives to be incom- 
plete and fragmentary, we instinctively antici- 



IMMORTALITY 185 

pate an opportunity for them to come to their 
fullness. Tennyson has given classic expres- 
sion to this hope and to the reasons upon 
which it is based : — 

u Here sits he shaping wings to fly : 
His heart forbodes a mystery : 
He names the name Eternity. 

" That type of Perfect in his mind 
In Nature can he nowhere find. 
He sows himself on every wind. 

" He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend, 
And thro' thick veils to apprehend 
A labor working to an end." 

Man, sitting here in the dust in all his incom- 
pleteness, is conscious of undeveloped powers. 
He feels himself made for a grander destiny 
than any he has yet experienced, and the 
thought of something above time, eternity, is 
born. Imperfect, he dreams of the Perfect, 
and without visible reward, freely gives him- 
self to the attainment of ideals. Conscious of 
these ideals, aspirations, and imperatives within 
him, he perceives a Friendly Power in the uni- 
verse working toward great ends. "This in- 
stinct for a future life," Tennyson once said, 



186 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

" is a presumption of its truth." And no one 
has stated more forcibly than he that deep 
spiritual intuition, which high souls have, that 
life will come to its fulfillment : — 

" The wages of sin is death : If the wages of virtue be dust, 

Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm 

and the fly, 

She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just : 

To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky : 

Give her the wages of going on and not to die." 

Tennyson with strong conviction reasoned 
of a life to come, but Browning asserted it as 
an inevitable presupposition. He considered 
man too great a being to be held in the bounds 
of the physical and temporal. His thoughts 
are scarcely to be packed into a narrow act, 
his unmeasured thirst for good causes him to 
transcend his past, while 

"In man's self arise 
August anticipations, symbols, types 
Of a dim splendor ever on before." 

Our life here is a broken column, an unfin- 
ished circle ; — 

" It is God's task to make the heavenly period 
Perfect the earthly." 



IMMORTALITY 187 

Modern scholarship has, indeed, thrown 
light on the essential nature of personality and 
has made us realize that after all we are only 
potential persons. The gap between what we 
are, and what we aspire to be and know we 
ought to be, is making the present generation 
feel the need of a future to make life rational 
and complete. " Till it is felt," says Martineau, 
"that heaven is needed to complete the his- 
tory of earth, till men become conscious of 
capacities for which their present sphere of 
action is too contracted, till the wants of the 
intellect and of the affections cry aloud within 
them for the boundless and the eternal, the 
distant words of Christian promise will die 
away, ere they reach their hearts." 

This premonition of a future, which has 
been characteristic of humanity, is rendered 
all the more credible when we reflect on the 
richness of man's equipment. We are too roy- 
ally gifted for a successful and contented 
animal existence. The very wealth of our re- 
sources unfits us for a prosperous physical life. 
We should be better animals were we less 
splendidly endowed. 



188 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

" Know, man hath all that Nature hath but More, 
And in that More lie all his hopes of good." 

I£ life is adjustment of inner relations to outer 
relations, and that which is outer is simply the 
material, then this More misshapes him. Take 
out his reason and replace it with a few strong 
instincts, and he would make fewer mistakes. 
Put a sensitive impulse in the place of con- 
science, and he would doubtless walk easier 
in the way of life and with less suffering ; 
quench all aspirations and destroy the power 
of framing ideals, and he would be far health- 
ier and happier. It is the More which brings 
into humanity most of the sickness, all of the 
agony of remorse and the torment of guilt, 
all of those longings and desires which keep us 
in perpetual discontent. The brute is much 
better adapted than man to a purely material 
environment. Man is too opulently dowered 
for a life that is of the earth earthy. As an 
animal he is not a success. Nature in too 
ambitious a mood has made a magnificent 
mistake. 

But may not this More, — conscience, rea- 
son, imagination, free will, thirst for the best, 



IMMORTALITY 189 

— which misfits man for a merely physical 
existence, relate him to a world that is above 
the physical? May not this More be prophetic 
of something beyond ? We are, even now, liv- 
ing in our second life. In our former or pre- 
natal state we had an existence which was 
both adapted to its environment and was form- 
ing faculties for the life we are now living. 
Our eyes were wonderfully fashioned while 
we were yet in the darkness ; our ears were 
framed in the silence ; our limbs were moulded 
when they were not needed. These were all 
prophetic of a life to come. The eye indicated 
that some day we should live in a world of 
light ; the ear betokened a place of sound ; 
the limbs promised a condition of activity and 
freedom then unpossessed. We died to that 
embryonic life, and through pain were born 
into a world where the More, superfluous in 
the old environment, became the faculties by 
which we now live in a world of light and 
music and freedom. Why is it not reasonable 
to believe that our spiritual faculties — our 
thirst for holiness, our visions of God, our 
dream of eternity, our sense of the moral 



190 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

framework of the universe — are premonitory 
of that higher state of being for which the 
holiest have always yearned ? The Christian 
faith affirms that the process and discipline of 
life is unveiling a spiritual image within us. 
This spiritual self is correlated to a spiritual 
world, diviner than this, where it shall come 
to the fullness of its being. If we hold this 
faith, we have a rational explanation of the 
meaning of life and of its discipline. Set this 
faith aside, and we have to explain a creature 
with the life of a worm, and yet with the en- 
dowments of one of the sons of God ! We 
must explain a profligacy of nature which 
overloads with fine wealth, and a wantonness 
of nature which, having given superlative 
gifts, ruthlessly disappoints that which has 
been the life and confident faith of the holiest 
spirits. 

We believe in immortality because we trust 
the fidelity of the Eternal Power by whom all 
things were created. We have been fashioned 
in the womb of the universe. Its life is within 
us and its nature has been stamped upon us. 
What is deepest in man bears the pledge of 



IMMORTALITY 191 

that which is deepest in the universe. What 
is wrought in the fabric of our being has been 
given us by the Power which made us. The 
Creator has certainly placed deep within us a 
sense of the infinite. He has given to us the 
forward look. He has inspired our dreams of 
the Perfect. He has bestowed upon us the 
realization and the love of values which are 
in themselves unconditioned by time and su- 
perior to it. " That religious instincts/' says 
Leeky, " are as truly a part of our nature as 
are our appetites and our nerves, is a fact 
which all history establishes, and which forms 
one of the strongest proofs of the reality of 
that unseen world to which the soul of man 
continually tends." These instinctive faiths in 
the future, and in the worth of the spiritual, 
are the promises of God, and out of his royal 
bounty he will fulfill them. Every discovery 
we make reveals to us that the universe is 
immeasurably richer in possibilities of bless- 
ing than we imagined. If Nature is always 
more opulent than we supposed, surely life, the 
crowning glory of nature, will not be poorer 
than our hopes. God is not mocked, neither 



192 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

does he mock us. Who of us can fail to agree 
with these convincing words of Martineau? — 
"If the celestial hope be a delusion, we 
plainly see who are the mistaken. Not the 
mean and groveling souls, who never reached 
so great a thought ; not the drowsy and easy 
natures, who are content with the sleep of 
sense through life, and the sleep of darkness 
ever after ; not the selfish and pinched of con- 
science, of small thought and smaller love ; no, 
these in such case are right, and the universe 
is on their miserable scale. The deceived are 
the great and holy, whom all men, aye, even 
these very insignificants themselves, revere; 
the men who have lived for something better 
than their happiness, and spent themselves in 
the race, or fallen at the altar of human good: 
— Paul with his mighty and conquering cour- 
age; yes, Christ himself, who vainly sobbed his 
spirit to rest on his Father's imaginary love, 
and without result commended his soul to the 
Being whom he fancied himself to reveal. The 
self-sacrifice of Calvary was but a tragic and 
barren mistake ; for Heaven disowns the god- 
like prophet of Nazareth, and takes part with 



IMMORTALITY 193 

those who scoffed at him and would have him 
die ; and is insensible to the divine fitness 
which even men have felt, when they either 
recorded the supposed fact, or invented the 
beautiful fiction, of Christ's ascension. Whom 
are we to revere, and what can we believe, if 
the inspiration of the highest created natures 
are but cunningly devised fables? But it is 
not so : and no one who has found true guid- 
ance of heart from these noblest sons of 
heaven, will fear to stake his futurity, and the 
immortal life of his departed friends, on their 
vaticinations. These, of all things granted to 
our ignorance, are assuredly most like the 
hidden realities of God ; which may be greater, 
but will not be less, than the prophets and seers 
have foretold, and even our own souls, when 
gifted with the highest and clearest vision, dis- 
cern as truths not doubtful or afar off." 

Our faith in a life hereafter rests ultimately 
upon our trust in the fidelity of the Living 
God. He has given us the wonderful gift of 
personality, though as yet we are in the germ ; 
he has laid his law upon us to live a life which 
in its nature is superior to time, and is but im- 



194 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

perfectly realized in time; he has given us 
a spiritual equipment which unfits us for a 
merely physical existence, but which relates us 
to a system above the material order, and is 
prophetic of a life to come ; he has consumed 
countless ages in bringing man thus far on 
his journey and the pilgrimage is still in pro- 
gress. The goal will be reasonable and good, 
commensurate with the cost of the process. 
Our Maker implanted the dream of a splendor 
beyond, and created those conditions out of 
which grew our hope of reunion with those 
who have gone before. He 

" forged that other influence 
That heat of inward evidence 
By which [we] doubt against the sense." 

Assuredly the desire he has implanted will be 
satisfied according to the greatness of his 
wisdom and his loving power. 

We often hear men declare that they have 
no wish for a future life ; they are willing at 
any time to lay down the burden; and the 
thought of an endless sleep is sweet to them. 
We all have these moods, but they are moods 
of depression. They result usually from disap- 



IMMOETALITY 195 

pointment, or lowered vitality. John Adding- 
ton Symonds was expressing the feelings of a 
sick soul when he wrote : " Until the immor- 
tality of the individual is irrefragably demon- 
strated, the sweet, the immeasurably precious 
hope of ending with this life the ache and 
languor of existence, remains open to bur- 
dened human personalities." When life is at 
its best we are eager for further venture. It 
is when we are finding our lives by losing 
them in service that we are glad to continue 
in the wars of God, and anticipate the joy and 
vision of the redeemed. Whatever may be the 
varying inclination of the individual, it is 
indisputable that the race has had a strong 
premonition of a future which will fulfill and 
explain this life. 

Belief in the life hereafter is not only a 
reasonable hope, it is more reasonable than its 
opposite. It is reasonable to trust in the high- 
est in man — his ideals, hopes, spiritual intui- 
tions, and reasoned faiths; the highest in his- 
tory — the universal faith of the supreme souls 
as against the materialistic and narrow views of 
the lowest; the highest in the universe — the 



196 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

justice, righteousness, and reasonableness of 
God. " A king was sitting with his warriors 
round the fire in a gloomy castle. It was night 
and winter. Suddenly a little bird flew in at 
an open door, and flew out again at another. 
The king spoke, and said : i This bird is like 
man in the world ; it flew in from the dark- 
ness, and out again into the darkness, and was 
not long in the warmth and light/ 'King/ 
replied the oldest of the warriors, 'even in the 
dark the bird is not lost, but finds its nest/ " 

IV 

Modern Ideas of the Future 

We are less certain than our fathers of the 
condition of those who have passed beyond the 
veil. With the law of growth so ineffaceably 
impressed upon our minds, we cannot think 
of the redeemed as being immediately per- 
fected. Development seems to be the prescribed 
method of life, and we conceive of all pure souls 
as mounting an ever ascending pathway of 
power and joy. The vast prison-house of tor- 
ture, whose material flames and endless tor- 
ments so scared the men of other days, is rapidly 



IMMORTALITY 197 

fading from the thoughts of men to-day. That 
men in that other life will reap the harvests of 
the seeds sown here, we all believe, but of the 
nature and conditions of that reaping we have 
no more knowledge than our fathers had. Some 
among us hold to the ultimate annihilation of 
the incorrigibly wicked. God, so runs the ar- 
gument, is the life of the world. The person 
who fails to live a life in God by faith, or 
who bars the doors of the soul to the Divine 
Spirit, is not in vital connection with the 
source of all spiritual life, and finally goes 
where the flame of a candle goes when it goes 
out. Others cherish the hope that every wan- 
dering soul will finally seek and find the way 
of life. Men are made in the image of the In- 
finite Reason ; will they not all at length act 
in reason and in righteousness ? Jeremiah saw 
a potter in Jerusalem take the vessels that had 
been marred in the process of making, and 
put them again upon the wheel to be fashioned 
into other vessels. If the potter can work 
his will with the refuse, cannot the good will 
of God take humanity's broken lives and re- 
form them into objects of use and beauty? 



198 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

Many Christians to-day utterly refuse to draw 
the line of opportunity at the grave. They be- 
lieve that there is no warrant for the dogma, 
either in Scripture or in reason, that probation 
ends at death. Their hope follows the broken 
vessel 

" Into that sad obscure sequestered state 
Where God unmakes but to remake the soul 
He else made first in vain ; which must not be." 

Still others recognize the possibility that man 
in his freedom may persist in evil choices and 
thus enfold himself in darkness and in misery. 
Men to-day are not inclined to dogmatize upon 
what takes place in the great Beyond. They 
trust the good and the evil alike to the justice 
and the mercy of God. 



vn 

IMPROVEMENT 



VII 

IMPROVEMENT 

In closing this series of familiar talks I wish 
to make what the Puritan preachers called the 
"improvement." Having unfolded their doc- 
trine, they applied it rigorously to the minds 
and hearts of their hearers. The contempla- 
tion of lofty themes is valueless unless what 
is a truth to the reason becomes a law to the 
will. There are four considerations which I 
would leave indelibly impressed upon your 
minds. The first is that profound saying of 
Goethe's : — 

" Mankind is always progressing, 
But man is always the same." 

If humanity is advancing in knowledge, we 
must expect ever changing conceptions, and 
enlarged interpretations of the significance of 
life and the mystery of nature. Our little sys- 
tems must have their day and cease to be. New 
light will come with every forward movement. 



202 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

But man is always the same. His deep needs 
change not. The fundamental laws of his be- 
ing are permanent. The generations slake their 
thirst at the same fountains ; they see the same 
unfading Light; they are sustained by the 
same unexhausted Strength. We have what our 
fathers had, and any spiritual advance of which 
we may boast is simply a stronger and larger 
grasp upon truths which are the permanent 
possession of the race. Forms of worship, sys- 
tems of philosophy, ecclesiastical organizations 
are fashioned and pass away, but the essential 
elements of religion abide. Therefore, while 
we expect to have new theologies ever replac- 
ing the old, we must remember that beneath 
all divergencies of creed and forms of insti- 
tutions we belong to a vast brotherhood of 
good men. When one doubts the creed in 
which he was reared he has not necessarily 
outgrown the religion of his fathers. He may 
as easily cast off the intellectual conceptions 
of former generations as a tree sheds its leaves. 
But let him not imagine that he has become 
superior to those needs which have revealed 
themselves in every earnest soul in all the cen- 



IMPROVEMENT 203 

turies. Neither in his conceit let him dream 
that he has opened undiscovered sources o£ 
grace and strength. He may think he has laid 
aside the Christian faith when he has only cast 
off his boyish notions of religion. There is a 
faith common to all good men. All spiritually 
minded persons stand in the holy succession 
of the prophets and apostles. Their differences 
arise mainly from diversities of temperament 
and peculiarities of speech. If we could under- 
stand one another, we should be surprised to 
learn how much we have in common. As Car- 
lyle said of his friend John Sterling : " We 
agree in everything except our opinions." 

A second thought should be remembered. 
If we have any reason for being, it is that we 
grow up, and do our part in making the world 
better. We are here to achieve a masterly and 
symmetrical development of our personalities, 
and to do good. It was a poet's true instinct 
which led Keats to write : " Call the world a 
vale of soul-making. Then you will find out 
the use of the world." Man is the measure of 
all things. Nothing is valuable except as it 
makes for manhood. "Men are not here to 



204 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

make money, but money is here to make men." 
It was a clear-thinking student who said, " Man 
exists in order to grow better, and the world 
exists in order to help him." 

If, and this is our third suggestion, a man 
is in this world for self -development and for 
service, we have a sure test of what is essen- 
tial and of what is non-essential in religion. 
We often hear the assertion of different sects 
that belief in certain dogmas is necessary to 
salvation, or that specific rites are indispens- 
able. We have at hand a very ready probe 
for these claims. Whatever ideals, opinions, 
principles enter vitally into character to affect 
it for good are essential ; all else is of subor- 
dinate importance. For example. What a man 
practically believes and lays to heart about the 
nature of God reports itself ineffaceably in 
character. Firm belief in the divine right- 
eousness and benignity makes for a nobler 
manhood than the opinion that the Eternal 
is unconscious Caprice. An ideal of holiness 
and an ideal of wealth shed a different lustre 
upon the devotee.CJBut the quantity of water 
used in baptism is not evidenced in life. jTwo 



IMPROVEMENT 205 

men may be equally devout and good, although 
taking opposite sides in the dispute regarding 
the fall of man. Apostolical succession may 
be necessary to an ecclesiastical system, but 
its belief and practice do not develop the 
finer Christian graces. Are we not justified 
in affirming that whatever manifests itself in 
virility and beauty of character — such as 
faith in a good God, belief in the supremacy 
of those moods and spiritual forces which are 
covered by the name of Christ — is essential 
to religion ; while all else, though important to 
a system of thought, or a form of government, 
is subordinate ? Is it not pitiable that the di- 
visions of Christendom arise from causes so 
insignificant, that most of them may be rele- 
gated to the limbo of the non-essential ? They 
are the grief of angels, and will be the scoff 
of posterity. 

The fourth truth which I would call to your 
minds follows naturally from what has been 
said. If we are in this world to come to the 
measure of the stature of the fullness of our 
personality, and if whatever is vital to religion 
discloses its worth in its effect upon character, 



206 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

then it is evident that we may have certitude 
regarding the fundamentals of religion. This 
is well to remember, for too often the impres- 
sion is given that religion after all is but a 
grand Surmise. I confess that I have little 
sympathy with the oft-quoted words of Ten- 
nyson : — 

" We have but faith : we cannot know ; 
For knowledge is of things we see." 

The poet would use language scientifically, 
but he conveys a false impression. He leaves 
us feeling that in spiritual matters we are in- 
fants crying in the night, while in mundane 
affairs we walk in the light. It is the speech 
of a bewildered soul groping in the dark- 
ness. Not thus would Christ have employed 
the word "know." He knew God and the sanc- 
tions of the spiritual world. He was as certain 
of the unseen mansions in which his higher 
nature dwelt in fullness of strength and joy as 
he was of the temple in Jerusalem. The men 
of imposing and luminous religious characters 
of all times have considered the physical as the 
veil hiding the verities of the spiritual world. 
The temporal phantasmagoria will soon pass 



IMPROVEMENT 207 

away : indeed, it is continually passing ; it is 
the Unseen that is known and abiding. No 
religious mind of genius and experience would 
admit that it is surer of what it beholds with 
the bodily eyes than of what it sees with the 
spiritual intuitions. " I know " is the familiar 
expression of the chief leaders in the realm 
of the spiritual, and not for a moment would 
they, or should we, be willing to give that 
strong word to be the exclusive possession of 
the senses. The religious man may have a cer- 
tainty of spiritual things, which lies deeper in 
his heart, and is more authoritative over his 
conduct, than is his certainty of what his eyes 
perceive. Without stopping to quibble over 
the definition of a word, I think we are justi- 
fied in declaring that we have real certitude 
of what enters vitally into character and con- 
duct. Whatever stands the test of life is true. 
Falsehood does not form strong men. Error 
does not permanently enrich existence. The 
form in which we hold this germ of truth may be 
ludicrous, yet if our belief ministers to human 
well-being, the Eternal is in it. Our concep- i 
tions may be utterly inadequate, but we know 



208 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

that we have a firm grasp on Reality, if our 
religion comes into our lives as strength and 
light. 

There are two quite distinct types of men 
in the world, and their apprehension and ex- 
perience of religion differ according to their 
peculiar temperament. Kipling, in one of his 
most virile poems, designates them as the sons 
of Mary and the sons of Martha. With them 
we are familiar. One, fine-grained, mystical, 
fond of study and lofty speculation, who sees 
the soft light of the ideal falling upon the 
stern realities of the world ; the other, hard- 
headed, practical, self-sufficient, whose relig- 
ion is to do his duty, tell the truth, and help 
his neighbors. The church has been largely 
controlled by the sons of Mary, and in their in- 
terests. They, for the most part, have preached 
the sermons, written the hymns, elaborated the 
creeds, which the sons of Martha have only 
half understood and less than half believed. 
They have named the saints, and made their 
remarkable conversions and ecstatic experi- 
ences the standards of the religious life. Many 
a full-blooded, healthy son of Martha, being 



IMPROVEMENT 209 

little interested in what he heard at church, 
having no keen sense of sin, and feeling no 
sweet consciousness of forgiveness, has felt 
that there is little in religion for him. Relig- 
ion has been so exclusively interpreted in the 
language of the mystic that many practical 
men have felt that it is the luxury of a tem- 
perament and not a necessity of human na- 
ture. 

All of you, as practical men doing the hard 
work of the world, would probably classify 
yourselves as the sons of Martha. Will you 
permit me, therefore, to state, as well as I may, 
what I conceive to be those simple, universal 
elements which are the essence of religion and 
which make their appeal to that in all men 
which lies deeper than temperamental peculi- 
arities ? Of religion there are many definitions 
current in our time. It has been called the 
"life of God in the soul of man"; " moral 
triumph through the vision and grace of the 
moral deity " ; " the life and experience of the 
human soul in relation to higher spiritual 
Being." But Carlyle's rugged statement prob- 
ably makes the strongest impression upon the 



210 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

practical mind : " The thing a man does prac- 
tically lay to heart and know for certain, con- 
cerning his vital relations to this mysterious 
universe, and his duty and destiny there, that 
is in all cases the primary thing for him, and 
creatively determines all the rest. That is his 
religion." Eeligion as thus defined is a con- 
viction issuing in a vital relationship to God 
and men. It is man's attitude towards what is 
above him and around him. Now there is only 
one attitude for a sensible person to take to- 
wards that Power which alone is great. One is 
foolish to stand erect in the pride of self-suf- 
ficiency, confident that he is master of his fate 
and captain of his soul. A slight blow on the 
temple easily shatters this dream of egoism. 
Every true man recognizes that he is not his 
own. He came forth from the Eternal, and to 
the Eternal Will he must adjust himself. He 
knows that his supreme duty is to conform his 
character to the character of the Highest. He 
surrenders himself to the purposes of God and 
tries to be the man God would have him be, 
and to do the work which he believes the All 
Wise has assigned. "God whose I am and 



IMPROVEMENT 211 

whom I serve/' is a thought constantly in his 
mind. He realizes that he is only a bond serv- 
ant to a Lord ; he is a voice or a hand to the 
Vast Soul that works in him and through him. 
He does his work as ever in the Great Task- 
master's eye. 

Out o£ this attitude of loving obedience 
springs that superlative motive which is every- 
where commanded in the Scriptures. The ul- 
timate authority for right conduct, sanctioned 
by both the Old and New Testaments, is never 
economy, or popularity, or policy, but always 
the will and the character of God. The Jews 
were to be holy as God is holy. They were 
not to reap the corners of their fields nor to 
glean the vineyards, but to leave the rem- 
nants for the poor and the stranger, not be- 
cause this generous policy would prevent labor 
troubles, but because " I am the Lord thy 
God," the Father of the needy and the Pro- 
tector of the stranger. If a man takes this at- 
titude of self-surrender towards God and en- 
deavors to conform his character and deeds to 
the divine will, he is a religious man, whether 
he be a Baptist, a Unitarian, or a Catholic. 



212 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

The Christian man has certain moods and 
dispositions which are habitual and character- 
istic. He does not act towards men out of his 
hurt-bearing impulses, but his disposition is 
one of good will, his prevailing moods are of 
kindness and justice, his feelings are sympa- 
thetic and humane. The apostle set the stand- 
ard of this normal temper when he exclaimed, 
" Let this mind be in you which was also in 
Christ Jesus." 

Besides having habitual relationships and a 
prevailing mood, the religious man must be 
dedicated to a Cause. Like his Master he feels 
that he is in the world not to do his own will, 
but to work with God. God's Cause is the sov- 
ereignty of the divine will, and the unveiling 
of the divine likeness, in humanity. The re- 
ligious man believes that he is not dealing 
simply with details and with things ; he is co- 
operating with the divine Spirit that speaks 
in his own soul ; he is laboring with that hid- 
den Eeality which binds together and is work- 
ing through the scattered circumstances of 
life. Therefore he relates his work, whatever 
it may be, to God. Having found his task, he 



IMPROVEMENT 213 

brings it into connection with the divine pur- 
pose. Thus he develops his best nature. He 
finds his life by losing it. Through self-f or- 
getfulness he comes to self-realization. 

The most menial duty assumes dignity when 
it is seen in its relationship to the kingdom 
of God. Drudgery becomes endurable, and 
even glorious, when performed in a lofty spirit, 
just as the common soldier knows that the 
routine of camp life is saved from meanness 
by the nobility of the Cause for which he is 
campaigning. Does not a man gain something 
exceedingly valuable when, ceasing to consider 
his work as a mere means of getting a liveli- 
hood, he labors under the inspiration of the 
thought that his daily toil is related to the 
good of humanity and the will of God? Sim- 
ple things are thus consecrated and the ground 
upon which he stands becomes holy. 

But the heart of religion lies deeper than 
any truth of which I have yet spoken. If Jesus 
came to the world and lived his beautiful life 
of obedience to God and of neighborliness to 
men, revealing those high moods which make 
life abundant in joy and power ; if he held up 



214 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

a vision of the kingdom of God and called 
upon men everywhere to make this the first 
object of their ambition ; if he did all this and 
nothing more, he would be a taskmaster harder 
than Moses. He would be a lawgiver with 
more elevated standards, intensifying the mis- 
ery of our conscious shortcomings. But he 
revealed a gospel, and not simply ideals of 
character and conduct, so exalted as to be un- 
attainable. The gospel is that God helps men 
to live the life they ought to live. The su- 
preme service which Jesus rendered was to 
awaken in men a vivid and commanding con- 
sciousness of the ever-present grace of God. 
He made his followers feel that God cares for 
the most insignificant life. Walking one day 
in the market-place, he saw some sparrows ex- 
posed for sale. Two sparrows were sold for a 
farthing, but five were given for two farthings. 
The tiny creature was so valueless that in a 
trivial two-farthing trade it was thrown in as 
an extra. " Yet," exclaimed the Master, " not 
one of them is forgotten in the sight of God ! " 
The Father in heaven not only observes, he 
searches for the lost, as a woman sweeps her 



IMPROVEMENT 215 

house for a small coin, as a shepherd seeks a 
wandering sheep. The shepherd follows the 
foolish and helpless sheep, at the cost of pri- 
vation and suffering, out into the night and 
into the wilderness. You will notice that the 
rescue does not depend solely upon the lost 
sheep hearing the voice of the shepherd and 
obediently following him back to the fold. 
The shepherd is strong and the way, leading 
o'er crag and torrent, is difficult. Christian art 
has been true to the heart of the gospel in 
representing the good shepherd carrying the 
lost lamb in his arms. In him is the power that 
seeks and saves. Or, to change the illustration: 
A sailor falls overboard in the high seas and 
the commander throws to him a life-line. If 
the drowning man will cling tenaciously to the 
line, he will be brought in safety to the vessel. 
But the current runs strong, the waters are 
cold, and his grasp is feeble. If his rescue 
depends upon his ability to cling to the life- 
line, the sailor is lost. But the commander 
does more than throw out a rope. He orders 
the lifeboat lowered, it draws near the strug- 
gling sailor, and the commander lays hold upon 



216 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

him. Now, the salvation of the sinking man 
lies, not first of all in his purpose to save him- 
self, it rests in the purpose and strength of the 
commander. He is saved because neither height 
nor depth can separate him from the might 
of the compassion which has taken him in its 
keeping. This crude illustration is to my mind 
an expression of the grace and glory of our 
religion. God, in his Son and in his Spirit, 
searches for his lost ones. At extreme cost to 
himself he lays hold of every willing life. It 
was Christ's nature to love men in their sins 
and to help men out' of them; it is God's na- 
ture also. His is a love that will not let us go. 
Having loved his own, he will love them to 
the end. The hope of redemption is not se- 
creted in the energies of the human will, but 
in the Everlasting Love and power that pities, 
and follows, and encompasses men with a per- 
fect defense. Man's fidelity to God is only part 
of our religion. God's fidelity to man is its 
abiding hope and unspeakable glory. 

There is a still more practical way of stating 
the work which religion does in remoulding 
broken and imperfect lives. Professor James 



IMPROVEMENT 217 

has described regeneration as a process by 
which " a self hitherto divided, and consciously 
wrong, inferior, and unhappy, becomes unified, 
and consciously right, superior, and happy, in 
consequence of a firmer hold upon religious 
realities." This is a forcible statement of the 
e very-day achievement of religion. Men are 
aware that their natures are divided. The 
flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit 
lusteth against the flesh. Christianity unifies 
the nature by bringing all its faculties into 
subjection to a Master. It takes men who are 
consciously wrong, and makes them consciously 
right with God and men, through repentance 
and the assurance of forgiveness. Inferior men 
are endued with power to conquer themselves 
and the hostile conditions of their lives. Men 
bitterly unhappy have been lifted into perma- 
nent moods of joy and serene courage. This 
wonder is the familiar story of every Bowery 
mission and of every living church. It is so 
common that it fails to attract attention. 
Science can explain the psychology of the 
change, but it cannot work the miracle. It can 
trace the process, but it cannot furnish the 



218 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

power. Much less can it produce that knightly 
passion, so characteristic of men really regen- 
erated, to spend and be spent in the service of 
others. 

In drawing this discourse to a close, I wish 
to call your attention to a fact which is import- 
ant for men of mature years to keep in mind. 
It is the prevalent opinion that youth is the 
period of life which is exposed to the gravest 
peril. If the young man can be gotten over the 
slippery paths of the early years, and be well 
settled in a profitable business, and in a com- 
fortable home, then the safety of his life is 
assured. Like a tree planted by the rivers of 
water, he will bring forth good fruit in its 
season. But probably more men go wrong in 
the midst of the years than in early man- 
hood, even as more ships go down upon the 
high seas than founder when sailing out of 
the harbor. 

History sustains this contention. Consider 
how many of the kings of Israel failed in 
middle life. Saul in his young manhood was 
the glory of Israel; in the fullness of his 
strength he fell through self-will. Solomon 



IMPROVEMENT 219 

dedicated himself in youth to wisdom; in his 
later years he was a far-famed voluptuary. If 
many of the Roman emperors had died in 
middle life, they would have left names of im- 
perishable honor. Benedict Arnold at twenty- 
one, in like circumstances, would have exclaimed 
with Nathan Hale, "I only regret that I have 
but one life to give for my country." One of 
the most brilliant editors of the past genera- 
tion began his career at Brook Farm. In his 
early life he was an idealist as stainless as 
Garrison or Phillips. After the Civil War he 
dipped his brilliant pen in the gall of bitter- 
ness to defend the most debased political ma- 
chine of the day. 

Literature teaches the same lesson. Dante 
gives us his own experience when he writes as 
the opening line of the "Divine Comedy"; 
"Midway in the journey of our life I found 
myself in a dark wood, where the right way 
was lost." Shakespeare at forty confronted 
those stern powers which determine destiny. 
Then he turned from lighter plays to the deep 
themes of the tragedies. His great characters 
were not young. Lear lost and found himself 



220 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

in old age. The king in "Hamlet" murdered 
his brother in that period of life when the hey- 
day of the blood is cool and waits upon the 
judgment. Macbeth and his lady would not 
have slain their king and guest in the more 
generous days of youth. Macduff reveals the 
cause of Macbeth's damnation. 

" This avarice 
Sticks deeper, grows with more pernicious root 
Than Summer-seeming lust." 

Tennyson represents Gareth as easily conquer- 
ing the Knight of the Morning Star, but the 
Knight of Noonday is overcome with more 
difficulty. The daily newspaper confirms the 
testimony of literature and of history. The 
forgers and defaulters of whom we read are not 
usually young men. The financiers whose un- 
scrupulous practices have endangered the lib- 
erties of our institutions are men of ripened 
experience. Our Pharisees are seldom in the 
flush of youth. 

Why do so many good men break down in 
the midst of the years ? One reason is that the 
temptations of middle life are deadlier than 
those of early manhood. The sins of the 



IMPROVEMENT 221 

younger days grow out of the impulses of the 
flesh. They are born of hot blood and of im- 
mature judgment. The perils of middle life 
are of the spirit. They are less gross, but more 
reptilian and insidious. 

These are the years of waning enthusiasm. 
Youth is generous and ardent, ambitious of 
glorious achievement. Young men are sus- 
ceptible of moral appeal. By middle life one 
has learned how mighty is the pressure to 
bring one's ideals down to the dead level of 
character. He finds that to follow his highest 
conceptions of duty and honor involves con- 
stant misunderstanding and sacrifice. The 
price he is paying for righteousness appalls 
him, and he concludes to aim lower and be 
more comfortable. Moreover, the years have 
revealed his limitations. It is a serious moment 
when a man realizes that he is only an atom. 
Then he confronts the temptation to give up 
lofty endeavor and to look first after his own 
interests. It is a critical moment in the race 
of life when one loses his first wind. He is apt 
also to lose his enthusiasm and drop out of 
the running. But if he resolutely continues, 



222 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

he soon taps a fresh reservoir of energy and 
presses on with vigor and joy. There is no 
more crucial period in life than the period 
when one's early enthusiasms are a spent force, 
and one is learning to fall back on the steady 
convictions of the spirit. 

The fact that you and I are sober, industri- 
ous, and eminently respectable citizens in the 
maturity of our powers does not prove that 
in the essential qualities of manhood we may 
not be inferior to men of less reputable lives. 
We have passed creditably through the stormy 
period of youth, and there is little danger that 
we shall give way to the baser sensuous pas- 
sions. But are we meeting the perils of middle 
life with equal valor? Are our ideals of per- 
sonal conduct as lofty as they were twenty 
years ago? Are our standards of thought and 
action as elevated as then? Are we as respon- 
sive to the high calls of duty? Are we grow- 
ing broader in vision, more sympathetic of 
heart, more consecrated in purpose? Or have 
we settled down ? Are we on the march, or are 
we making ourselves generally comfortable? 
Are we pressing on towards a worthy goal, or 



IMPROVEMENT 223 

has the vision splendid faded into the light of 
common day? 

Let me bring these familiar talks, of whose 
inadequacy I am all too conscious, to a close by 
an illuminating quotation from Schleiermacher, 
one of the most distinguished exponents of the 
new theology in the nineteenth century. The 
cardinal doctrine of this theology — the in- 
dwelling of the Spirit of God in the world — 
so filled his mind with rapture that he uttered 
these memorable words, which disclose the 
spiritual enthusiasm which may come to those 
who enter completely into the new light which 
has fallen upon the old faith : " Unf eebled will 
I bring my spirit down to life's closing period : 
never shall the genial courage of life desert 
me; what gladdens me now shall gladden me 
forever ; my imagination shall continue lively, 
and my will unbroken, and nothing shall 
force from my hand the magic key which 
opens the mysterious gates of the upper world, 
and the fire of love within me shall never be 
extinguished. I will not look upon the dreaded 
weakness of age ; I pledge myself to supreme 
contempt of every toil which does not concern 



224 THE NEW LIGHT ON THE OLD TRUTH 

the true end of my existence, and I vow to re- 
main forever young. . . . The spirit that im- 
pels man forward shall never fail me, and the 
longing which is never satisfied with what has 
been, but ever goes forth to meet the new, 
shall be mine. The glory I shall seek is to 
know that my aim is infinite, and yet never 
to pause in my course. ... I shall never 
think myself old until my work is done, and 
that work will not be done while I know and 
will what I ought. ... To the end of my 
life I am determined to grow stronger and 
livelier by every act, and more vital through 
every improvement. . . . No event shall have 
power to disturb my heart; the pulse of my 
inner life shall remain fresh while life en- 
dures." 

Such was the enthusiasm created in the 
heart of one of the earliest expounders of the 
new light, and such ardor and joy glows in 
the heart of every one who sees " truth en- 
kindled along the stairway of the eternal 
palace." 

THE END 



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